ONE  HUNDEED  YEARS  OF  PEACE 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

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TORONTO 


FACSIMILE    OF    THE    SIGNATURES    TO    THE    TREATY    OF 
GHENT 


ONE   HUNDRED  YEARS 
OF   PEACE 


BY 
HENRY   CABOT  LODGE 


WITH  ILLUSTRATIONS 


Nefo  |f  orfe 

THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 
1913 

All  right*  reserved 


COPYRIGHT,   1912, 

BT  THE  OUTLOOK  COMPANY. 

COPYMOHT,   1913, 

BY  THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY. 

Set  up  and  electrotyped.     Published  September,  1913. 


NortenoB 

J.  8.  Cushing  Co.  —  Berwick  4  Smith  Co. 
Norwood,  Mass.,  U.S.A. 


PREFATORY  NOTE 

THIS  sketch  of  the  relations  between  the  United 
States  and  Great  Britain  during  the  century  which 


ERRATA 

Page  49,  fifth  line  from  the  bottom,   for   "is"  read   "are." 
Page  98,   seventh  line  from  the  top,  for   "Slumkey"  read 


"SJurk." 


296783 


NorinooB 

J.  8.  Cushing  Co.  —  Berwick  A  Smith  Co. 
Norwood,  Mass.,  U.S.A. 


PREFATORY  NOTE 

THIS  sketch  of  the  relations  between  the  United 
States  and  Great  Britain  during  the  century  which 
has  elapsed  since  the  War  of  1812  appeared  first  in 
the  "Outlook."  To  the  publishers  of  the  "Out 
look  "  I  wish  to  express  my  thanks  for  their  kind 
permission  to  reprint  here  the  two  original  articles 
revised,  corrected,  and  much  enlarged. 


296783 


LIST   OF   ILLUSTRATIONS 

FACSIMILE    OF    THE    SIGNATURES    TO    THE    TREATY    OP 

GHENT       ........        Frontispiece 

FACING   PAGK 
"WHAT?     YOU  YOUNG  YANKEE-NOODLE,  STRIKE  YOUR  OWN 

FATHER?" 24 

JOHN  QUINCY  ADAMS 36 

ROBERT  SOUTHEY,  CHARLES  DICKENS,  AND  SIDNEY  SMITH  44 
JAMES  BRYCE,   WILLIAM   MAKEPEACE   THACKERAY,  AND 

WASHINGTON  IRVING 58 

WOODCUTTER'S  CABIN  ON  THE  MISSISSIPPI          ...  62 

THE  SOLEMNITY  OF  JUSTICE 64 

DANIEL  WEBSTER 74 

LORD  ASHBURTON 78 

REAR-ADMIRAL  CHARLES  WILKES,  U.  S.  N.         .        .        .  90 

LORD  PALMERSTON 96 

ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 100 

LORD  JOHN  RUSSELL 108 

CHARLES  FRANCIS  ADAMS 110 

"THE  LAND  OF  LIBERTY" 120 

THE  CHAMPION  MASHER  OF  THE  UNIVERSE       .        .        .  130 


vii 


ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  OF  PEACE 

THE  last  war  between  Great  Britain  and 
the  United  States  began  in  June,  1812. 
There  has  been  no  war  between  the  two 
countries  since  the  treaty  of  Ghent  was 
signed  on  Christmas  eve  in  1814.  Strictly 
speaking,  the  absence  of  war  constitutes 
peace,  and  therefore  we  may  describe  these 
hundred  years  just  passed  as  a  century  of 
peace  between  the  United  States  and  Great 
Britain.  But  in  the  larger  and  better  sense 
of  the  word  it  must  be  confessed  that  the 
relations  between  the  two  countries  during 
that  period  have  been  at  times  anything 
but  peaceful,  and  often  far  from  friendly. 
Indeed,  there  have  been  some  perilous 
moments  when  war  has  seemed  very  im 
minent.  To  describe  this  jeriod  therefore 
as  one  of  unbroken  good  will  merely  be 
cause  there  was  no  actual  fighting  would 
be  wholly  misleading.  If  a  review,  how- 


2  ,  •.  QNK  HUNDRED  YEARS  OF  PEACE 

ever  brief,  of  the  relations  between  Great 
Britain  and  the  United  States  since  1812  is 
to  possess  any  value,  it  can  only  be  through 
showing  how,  by  slow  steps,  with  many 
interruptions  and  much  bitterness  on  both 
sides,  we  have  nevertheless  finally  attained 
to  the  genuine  friendship  in  which  all  sen 
sible  men  of  both  countries  rejoice  to-day. 
This  fortunate  condition  has  been  reached 
only  after  many  years  of  storm  and  stress, 
which  it  seems  to  posterity,  always  blessed 
with  that  unerring  wisdom  which  comes  after 
the  event,  might  have  been  easily  avoided. 

To  understand  the  present  situation 
aright,  to  comprehend  the  meaning  and 
effects  of  the  war  of  1812  and  of  the  ninety- 
eight  years  of  peace  which  have  followed 
its  conclusion,  it  is  necessary  to  begin  with 
the  separation  of  the  two  countries  by  the 
Treaty  of  Paris  in  1782,  when  the  connec 
tion  between  England  and  the  United  States 
ceased  to  be  that  of  mother  country  and 
colonies  and  became  the  more  distant  rela 
tion  which  exists  between  two  independent 


ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  OF  PEACE    3 

nations.  Just  now  there  appears  to  be  a 
tendency  among  Englishmen  to  regard  that 
separation  of  the  eighteenth  century  as  a 
small  matter,  especially  so  far  as  their  own 
country  is  concerned,  a  view  which,  how 
ever  comfortable,  is  hardly  sustained  by 
history,  and  we  may  well  pause  a  moment 
at  the  outset  to  consider  just  what  the  war 
resulting  in  the  treaties  of  Paris  meant,  for 
on  that  decisive  event  rests  ultimately  all 
that  has  since  come  to  pass. 

As  an  illustration  of  the  attitude  of  mind 
to  which  I  have  referred,  let  me  take  the 
recent  case  of  a  well-known  writer  and  very 
popular  novelist.  Some  years  ago  Mr.  H. 
G.  Wells  came  to  this  country,  and  on  his 
return  to  England,  like  many  of  his  country 
men,  he  wrote  a  book  about  the  United 
States.  Unlike  many  of  his  countrymen, 
however,  he  wrote  a  very  pleasant  and 
friendly  book,  enlivened  by  some  character 
istic  remarks  in  favor  of  socialism  and  of 
converting  the  Niagara  Falls  into  horse 
power.  He  made,  however,  one  comment 


4          ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  OF  PEACE 

which  struck  me  at  the  time,  and  which,  I 
think,  has  been  made  since  by  others  of  his 
countrymen.  This  comment  was  in  connec 
tion  with  his  visit  to  Boston,  as  I  remember, 
and  criticised  us  good-naturedly  for  the 
extreme  care  with  which  we  marked  all  spots 
connected  with  the  Revolution,  and  for  the 
apparent  importance  which  we  attached  to 
that  event.  Mr.  Wells,  unlike  Sir  George 
Trevelyan,  the  most  brilliant  of  living  Eng 
lish  historians,  seemed  to  think  that  this 
American  feeling  about  the  Revolution 
which  resulted  in  the  independence  of  the 
United  States  was  provincial,  if  not  paro 
chial.  In  view  of  the  sound  system  of  Brit 
ish  education,  which  has  a  great  deal  to  say 
about  English  victories,  great  and  small,  and 
is  curiously  reticent  as  to  English  defeats, 
it  is  perhaps  not  surprising  that  the  impor 
tance  attached  to  the  incidents  of  the  Amer 
ican  Revolution  in  this  country  should 
surprise  the  average  traveller  from  Great 
Britain.  But,  putting  aside  the  partiality 
which  Americans  feel  toward  the  Revolution, 


ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS   OF  PEACE          5 

owing  to  the  fact  that  they  were  victorious, 
and  the  lack  of  interest  with  which  the 
British  regard  it,  possibly  because  they  were 
defeated,  it  is  perhaps  not  amiss  to  point 
out  that  the  war  for  American  independence 
really  was  an  event  of  high  importance,  and 
was  so  considered  then,  as  it  has  been  ever 
since,  by  dispassionate  persons. 

The  revolt  of  the  American  Colonies  in 
1776  agitated  the  world  of  that  day  far 
beyond  the  parish  limits  of  the  United  States. 
It  divided  parties  and  overthrew  Ministries 
in  England.  It  involved  France  and  Spain 
in  war  with  Great  Britain,  and  created  the 
armed  neutrality  of  the  northern  Powers, 
events  which  are  rarely  caused  by  trifling 
or  provincial  struggles.  But  the  American 
Revolution  had  results  even  more  momen 
tous  than  these.  It  broke  the  British 
Empire  for  the  first,  and,  so  far,  for  the 
only  time.  It  took  from  England  her 
greatest  and  most  valuable  possession. 
With  the  American  Colonies  she  lost  a 
population  equal  to  about  a  fifth  of  the 


6  ONE  HUNDRED   YEARS  OF  PEACE 

inhabitants  of  Great  Britain  at  that  period, 
as  well  as  the  ownership  of  the  best  part  of 
a  great  continent.  The  independence  of  the 
Colonies  was  the  foundation  of  the  United 
States,  and,  whether  one  approves  of  the 
United  States  or  not,  there  can  be  no  ques 
tion,  I  think,  that  they  constitute  to-day  a 
large  and  important  fact  in  the  existing 
world.  It  was  an  Englishman,  I  believe, 
who  said  that,  after  all,  England's  most  con 
siderable  achievement  was  the  United  States. 
Finally,  and  this  is  something  which  I  feel 
it  would  hardly  be  possible  to  describe  as 
parochial,  modern  democracy  began  with 
the  American  Revolution.  Carlyle,  who 
had  more  imagination  as  well  as  more  humor 
than  the  average  British  commentator,  either 
upon  America  or  upon  things  in  general, 
turns  aside  from  a  letter  of  Friedrich  to 
D'Alembert  which  happened  to  be  dated 
December  16,  1773,  in  order  to  give  an 
account,  a  quite  inimitable  account,  of  the 
Boston  Tea  Party  which  occurred  on  that 
day.  He  did  so  because,  to  use  his  own 


ONE  HUNDRED   YEARS  OF  PEACE          7 

words :  "  The  case  is  well  known  and  still 
memorable  to  mankind."  It  did  not  seem 
to  him  parochial,  but  on  the  contrary  an 
event  charged  with  meaning.  With  his 
penetrating  and  wide  ranging  glance,  at 
past  and  future  alike,  Carlyle  had  already 
in  one  oft  quoted  sentence  set  forth  what 
the  American  Revolution  really  meant  when 
he  wrote  the  history  of  that  greater  Revolu 
tion  which  came  to  pass  a  few  years  later 
on  the  other  side  of  the  English  Channel. 
Here  is  what  he  says :  "  Borne  over  the 
Atlantic,  to  the  closing  ear  of  Louis,  King 
by  the  Grace  of  God,  what  sounds  are  these ; 
muffled,  ominous,  new  in  our  centuries? 
Boston  Harbor  is  black  with  unexpected 
Tea;  behold  a  Pennsylvania  Congress 
gather;  and  ere  long,  on  Bunker  Hill,  De 
mocracy  announcing,  in  rifle  volleys  death- 
winged,  under  Star  Banner,  to  the  tune 
of  Yankee-doodle-do,  that  she  is  born  and, 
whirlwind-like,  will  envelop  the  whole 
world!" 

Another  great  writer  of  that  generation, 


8          ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  OF  PEACE 

a  friend  of  Carlyle,  read  the  same  prophecy 
in  the  revolt  of  the  Colonies.  With  the 
insight  of  the  poet,  Emerson  declared  that 
the  shot  which  the  embattled  farmers  fired 
at  Concord  Bridge  was  heard  "  round  the 
world,"  which,  although  expressed  in  verse, 
told  the  exact  truth.  At  that  bridge,  in 
that  little  New  England  village,  the  first 
drum-beat  of  democracy  broke  upon  the 
troubled  air,  and  there  the  march  began. 
The  same  drum-beat  was  heard  soon  after 
wards  in  France,  where  several  things 
happened  which  no  one  probably  would 
regard  as  provincial,  and  which  caused 
some  stir  at  the  time.  Looking  over 
the  world  to-day,  it  may  be  fairly  said 
that  no  greater  event  could  be  commemo 
rated  than  the  first  uprising  of  democracy 
which  later  swept  over  the  Governments  of 
the  nineteenth  century,  and  which  is  still 
pressing  onward,  crossing  even  now  into 
the  confines  of  Asia. 

Yet,  very  characteristically,  this  American 
Revolution,    which    Mr.    Wells    smiles    at 


ONE  HUNDRED   YEARS   OF  PEACE          9 

gently  as  a  little  provincial  incident,  but 
which  seems  not  to  have  been  without  its 
effect  on  the  history  of  civilized  man,  turned 
on  a  question  of  law.  That  two  great 
branches  of  the  same  people,  speaking  the 
same  language,  holding  the  same  beliefs, 
and  cherishing  the  same  institutions,  should 
go  to  war  about  a  question  of  legal  right  in 
the  imposition  of  taxes  is  indeed  very  typical 
of  the  race  and  breed.  It  is  also  one  reason 
why  the  war  of  the  Revolution,  as  a  whole, 
was  sullied  by  few  acts  of  cruelty  or  ferocity, 
for,  as  Macaulay  pointed  out  long  ago,  the 
character  of  a  civil  war  is  very  largely 
determined  by  the  amount  of  oppression 
which  one  side  has  suffered  at  the  hands  of 
the  other.  The  government  of  the  English 
colonies  in  America  had  been,  on  the  whole, 
easy  and  liberal.  Sir  Robert  Walpole,  with 
his  favorite  motto  of  "  Quieta  non  movere," 
with  his  wise  indifference  which  allowed  the 
dust  to  gather  upon  American  despatches, 
and  the  elder  Pitt,  who  had  the  faculty  of 
arousing  the  enthusiasm  of  the  colonists  by 


10         ONE  HUNDRED   YEARS  OF  PEACE 

appealing  to  their  patriotic  impulses  and  by 
treating  them  as  friends  and  equals,  had 
made  the  bonds  between  the  mother  country 
and  her  American  children  very  strong. 
But  a  dull  and  narrow-minded  King,  served 
by  ministers  of  slight  capacity  or  of  judi 
ciously  pliant  natures,  soon  undid  the  work 
of  the  two  great  statesmen  and  forced  on 
the  war  which  had  in  it  at  that  moment 
nothing  of  the  inevitable.  The  Revolution 
thus  generated  was  fought  out  through 
seven  long  years,  and  the  Colonies  won. 
There  was,  of  course,  bitterness  of  feeling 
on  both  sides,  but  none  which  could  not 
have  been  quickly  and  easily  overcome,  if 
right  methods  had  been  pursued.  The 
Americans,  it  is  true,  did  not  carry  out  the 
treaty  properly  in  regard  to  the  loyalists, 
and  the  British,  on  their  side,  failed  to 
observe  it  in  regard  to  the  relinquishment 
of  the  western  posts  which  were  an  absolute 
threat  not  only  to  the  expansion  but  to  the 
very  existence  of  the  United  States.  One  of 
the  greatest  achievements  of  Washington's 


ONE  HUNDRED   YEARS  OF  PEACE        11 

administration  was  the  Jay  treaty,  and  to 
make  this  settlement  with  England  he  sac 
rificed  the  French  alliance,  but  he  removed 
forever  the  western  menace  and  cleared  the 
frontiers  of  the  United  States  from  a  danger 
which  in  time  of  war  might  have  proved 
fatal.  The  French  Revolution,  which  de 
stroyed  the  American  alliance,  divided  public 
opinion  in  the  United  States,  as  it  did  in 
England,  and  the  immediate  result  was 
virtual,  although  not  declared,  war  with 
France,  a  situation  that  gave  England  an 
opportunity  to  bind  her  former  colonies 
closely  to  her,  which  unfortunately  did  not 
seem  to  English  statesmen  a  thing  worth 
doing. 

That  the  people  of  England  generally 
should  think  little  and  know  less  about 
their  former  colonies  during  the  closing 
years  of  the  eighteenth  century  is  not  sur 
prising.  It  was  the  period  of  the  French 
Revolution,  and  that  terrible  convulsion, 
which  brought  the  genius  of  Burke  to  the 
confines  of  madness,  unsettled  many  lesser 


12         ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  OF  PEACE 

minds,  and  through  the  passions  of  fear 
and  anger  seized  public  attention  with  such 
an  absorbing  and  relentless  grasp  that,  natu 
rally,  no  room  was  left  for  thought  concerning 
three  millions  of  English  speaking  people  who 
had  just  set  up  a  national  government  on  the 
other  side  of  the  Atlantic.  But  it  is  strange 
that  English  ministers,  statesmen  charged 
with  the  responsibility  of  government  in 
a  time  crowded  with  perils  of  every  kind, 
should  not  have  paid  some  attention  to 
the  United  States.  They  were  involved 
in  a  desperate  war  with  France.  Their 
success  at  sea  had  been  brilliant,  but  their 
military  failures  had  been  little  short  of 
appalling.  They  were  pouring  out  millions 
of  pounds  to  pay  for  coalitions  which  one 
after  the  other  went  to  pieces  in  defeat. 
Their  subsidies  were  almost  as  completely 
wasted  as  the  huge  sums  of  money  which 
went  to  the  Chouans  of  Brittany,  to  the 
wretched  following  of  the  Comte  d'Artois  in 
London,  or  to  the  conspirators  who  were 
trying  to  assassinate  the  First  Consul  in 


ONE  HUNDRED   YEARS  OF  PEACE        13 

Paris.  Their  allies  on  the  Continent  were 
breaking  down  as  the  century  ended,  and 
isolation  stared  them  in  the  face.  One 
would  have  imagined  that  under  such 
circumstances  they  would  have  looked  in 
every  corner  of  the  globe  for  new  friends 
and  new  sources  of  strength.  In  the 
United  States  were  three  millions  of  people, 
active,  enterprising,  pushing  their  vessels 
into  every  sea.  These  people  were  very 
largely  of  their  own  race  and  despite  the 
recent  war  were  still  bound  to  them  not 
only  by  community  of  language  and  of 
political  belief  but  by  the  still  stronger  ties 
of  long  existing  habits  of  trade,  of  com 
mercial  intercourse,  and  of  thought  and 
manners.  It  is  true  that  they  grudgingly 
drove  a  hard  bargain  with  the  United 
States  in  the  Jay  treaty.  But  that  was 
all.  They  were  content  to  avoid  war 
with  their  former  colonies,  and  then  they 
turned  their  backs  to  them,  even  when 
the  policy  of  France  was  forcing  the 
Americans  into  their  arms.  It  seems  a 


14        ONE  HUNDRED   YEARS  OF  PEACE 

strange  blindness  on  the  part  of  ministers 
of  a  great  country  at  such  a  time  as  that, 
filled  as  it  was  with  war  and  confusion, 
with  crumbling  governments  and  falling 
dynasties.  No  great  effort  was  required, 
had  they  wished  to  inform  themselves  as 
to  the  United  States  and  to  learn  that  it 
would  be  profitable  to  turn  them  from 
quondam  enemies  into  useful  friends  and 
allies.  It  was  not  difficult  to  acquire 
knowledge  of  the  United  States.  In  1794, 
for  instance,  Mr.  Thomas  Cooper,  an  Eng 
lishman  who  had  emigrated  to  America, 
published  in  the  form  of  letters  to  a  friend 
a  book  entitled  "  Some  Information  Re 
specting  America."  The  volume  did  not 
belie  its  title.  It  was  full  of  valuable  infor 
mation,  and  on  page  52  occurs  this  passage : 
"  There  is  little  fault  to  find  with  the 
government  of  America,  either  in  principle 
or  in  practice :  we  have  very  few  taxes 
to  pay,  and  those  are  of  acknowledged 
necessity,  and  moderate  in  amount :  we 
have  no  animosities  about  religion ;  it  is 


ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  OF  PEACE         15 

a  subject  about  which  no  questions  are 
asked :  we  have  few  respecting  political 
men  or  political  measures :  the  present 
irritation  of  men's  minds  in  Great  Britain, 
and  the  discordant  state  of  society  on 
political  accounts,  is  not  known  here.  The 
government  is  the  government  OF  the 
people,  and  FOR  the  people.  There  are 
no  tythes  nor  game  laws :  and  the  excise 
laws  upon  spirits  only,  and  similar  to  the 
British  only  in  name." 

It  is  interesting  to  note  that  this  little 
known  writer  described  the  character  of 
the  government  of  the  United  States  in 
the  exact  words  of  two  of  the  three  defi 
nitions  used  by  Lincoln  in  his  famous 
Speech  at  Gettysburg.  But  in  this  con 
nection  Thomas  Cooper's  book  is  of  im 
portance  as  showing  that  it  was  not 
difficult  for  Englishmen,  had  they  so  desired, 
to  obtain  information  about  the  United 
States.  If  the  book  ever  came  under  the 
eyes  of  any  of  them,  it  seems  as  if  the 
inference  would  have  been  drawn  that  a 


16        ONE   HUNDRED  YEARS  OF  PEACE 

people  of  whom  such  things  could  be 
written  deserved,  in  that  great  crisis  of 
western  civilization,  both  examination  and 
consideration. 

But  there  were  other  facts  of  public  no 
toriety  not  concealed  in  the  books  of  travel 
lers  which  must  also  have  been  known  to 
the  British  ministers,  but  which  went  by 
them  apparently  unheeded.  They  knew 
that  the  American  states,  shaken  and  broken 
by  seven  years  of  civil  war,  after  five  years 
of  a  weak  central  government,  ever  grow 
ing  more  impotent  and  imbecile,  had  come 
together  and  formed  a  Federal  constitution. 
It  was  a  constitution  of  an  unusual  charac 
ter.  There  was  nothing  like  it  just  then 
extant  among  men.  A  century  later  a 
great  English  statesman  and  prime  minister 
was  to  speak  of  it  as  the  most  remarkable 
instrument  of  government  ever  struck  off 
by  a  single  body  of  men  at  one  time,  and  Mr. 
Gladstone  was  confirmed  in  this  view  by 
Lord  Acton,  who  wrote  in  his  "  History  of 
Freedom  " : 


ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  OF  PEACE        17 

"  American  independence  was  the  begin 
ning  of  a  new  era,  not  merely  as  a  revival 
of  the  Revolution,  but  because  no  other 
revolution  ever  proceeded  from  so  slight  a 
cause  or  was  ever  conducted  with  so  much 
moderation.  The  European  monarchies 
supported  it.  The  greatest  statesmen  in 
England  averred  that  it  was  just.  It  estab 
lished  a  pure  democracy,  but  it  was  democ 
racy  in  its  highest  perfection,  armed  and 
vigilant,  less  against  aristocracy  and  mon 
archy  than  against  its  own  weakness  and 
excess.  Whilst  England  was  admired  for 
the  safeguards  with  which,  in  the  course  of 
many  centuries,  it  had  fortified  liberty 
against  the  power  of  the  crown,  America 
appeared  still  more  worthy  of  admiration 
for  the  safeguards  which,  in  the  deliberations 
of  a  single  memorable  year,  it  had  set  up 
against  the  power  of  its  own  sovereign  peo 
ple.  It  resembled  no  other  known  democ 
racy,  for  it  respected  freedom,  authority,  and 
law.  It  resembled  no  other  constitution,  for 
it  was  contained  in  half  a  dozen  intelligible 


18        ONE  HUNDRED   YEARS  OF  PEACE 

articles.  Ancient  Europe  opened  its  mind  to 
two  new  ideas  —  that  revolution  with  very 
little  provocation  may  be  just,  and  that 
democracy  in  very  large  dimensions  may  be* 
safe." 

To  criticise  Pitt  and  his  colleagues 
because  they  did  not  look  at  the  constitu 
tion  of  the  United  States  then  just  born  into 
the  world  with  the  eyes  of  posterity  or  with 
the  insight  and  comprehension  of  the  great 
est  historical  scholar  in  England  a  century 
afterwards  would  of  course  be  most  unjust. 
Yet  it  would  seem  not  unreasonable  to  ex 
pect  from  responsible  and  able  ministers, 
certainly  from  a  man  of  such  commanding 
intellect  as  the  younger  Pitt,  some  slight 
perception  of  the  meaning  of  the  American 
Revolution  and  of  the  remarkable  qualities 
of  the  constitution  of  the  United  States 
pointed  out  with  such  terseness  and  force 
by  Lord  Acton.  Had  they  given  any  at 
tention  to  the  subject,  they  must  have  seen 
that  in  this  new  constitution  and  its  first  ten 
amendments  were  embodied  all  those  great 


ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  OF  PEACE         19 

principles  of  individual  rights  and  ordered 
liberty  for  which  Englishmen  had  fought  for 
centuries.  They  must  have  perceived  with 
but  trifling  intellectual  effort  that  this  new 
government  was  organized  and  marching 
forwards,  that  the  Americans  had  provided 
for  the  payment  of  all  public  debts  with 
scrupulous  honesty,  that  their  revenue 
was  growing,  and  that  the  administration  of 
Washington,  of  whom  they  had  certainly 
heard,  was  strong  and  courageous  and  had 
not  hesitated  to  resist  revolutionary  France 
or  to  assert  complete  neutrality.  If  they 
had  considered  these  facts,  one  would  have 
supposed  that  in  their  own  condition,  en 
gaged  as  they  were  in  a  desperate  war,  they 
would  have  decided  that  the  friendship  of 
this  new  nation  was  worth  consideration  and 
cultivation.  But  the  thought  apparently 
never  occurred  to  them,  and  they  passed  the 
United  States  by  as  unworthy  of  attention 
and  deserving  only  of  contemptuous  and  ig 
norant  indifference.  Then  came  the  great 
struggle  with  Napoleon,  and  again  England 


20        ONE   HUNDRED  YEARS  OF  PEACE 

might  easily  have  made  her  former  colonies 
her  close  friends  and  allies.  This  policy  in 
deed  was  so  obvious  that  it  is  hard  to  under 
stand  why  even  English  ministers  failed  to 
adopt  it.  Jefferson,  with  all  his  eulogy  of 
France  and  denunciation  of  England  for  polit 
ical  purposes,  was  more  than  ready  to  unite 
with  her  against  Napoleon  if  England 
would  only  have  allowed  him  to  do  so,  but 
after  the  death  of  the  younger  Pitt  and  the 
dissolution  of  the  Ministry  of  "  All  the 
Talents,"  the  English  Government  fell  once 
more  into  the  hands  of  very  inferior  men. 
Ministers  of  the  caliber  of  Perceval,  Castle- 
reagh,  and  Lord  Liverpool,  united  with  ex 
treme  Tories  like  Lord  Eldon,  whose  ability 
was  crippled  by  their  blind  prejudices,  were 
utterly  unable  to  see  the  value  of  friendship 
with  the  United  States  and  preferred  to  treat 
their  former  colonists  with  a  comfortable 
contempt.  The  one  very  clever  man  not  in 
opposition  in  those  days  was  Canning,  and 
he  did  more  than  any  one  else,  perhaps,  by 
his  unfortunate  attitude  to  drive  the  United 


ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  OF  PEACE    21 

States  away  from  England.  It  was  he  who 
said  that  the  navy  of  the  United  States  con 
sisted  of  "  a  few  fir  frigates  with  a  bit  of 
bunting  at  the  top."  For  the  sake  of  this 
not  very  humorous  alliteration  he  paid  rather 
heavily  in  the  loss  of  a  good  many  English 
frigates  at  a  later  day.  Disraeli  says  in 
"  Sybil "  that  from  the  death  of  the  younger 
Pitt  to  1825  "  the  political  history  of  England 
is  a  history  of  great  events  and  little  men," 
a  description  of  the  period  as  terse  as  it  was 
truthful,  if  we  except  the  Duke  of  Welling 
ton.  The  combination  was  not  beneficial  to 
England  and  was  unfortunate  for  her  rela 
tions  with  the  United  States. 

It  is  not  pleasant  to  Americans  to  recall 
the  years  which  preceded  our  second  war 
with  England.  There  was  no  indignity,  no 
humiliation,  no  outrage,  that  England  on 
the  one  side  and  Napoleon  on  the  other 
did  not  inflict  upon  the  United  States. 
Our  Government  submitted  and  yielded 
and  made  sacrifices  which  it  is  now  difficult 
to  contemplate  with  calmness,  until  at  last 


22        ONE   HUNDRED  YEARS   OF  PEACE 

a  party  arose  composed  of  young  men 
who  were  profoundly  convinced  that  any 
thing  was  better  than  such  conditions,  and 
that  if  we  were  to  enjoy  a  national  exist 
ence  worth  having  we  must  fight.  They 
did  not  care  very  much  with  whom  we 
fought,  but  they  were  determined  to  fight 
some  one  in  order  to  vindicate  the  right 
of  the  United  States  to  live  as  a  nation 
without  dishonor.  The  unscrupulous  dex 
terity  of  Napoleon  and  the  marvellous  stu 
pidity  of  England  resulted  in  our  fighting 
England  instead  of  France,  and  thus  we 
came  to  the  war  of  1812. 

We  had  no  army  and  a  very  small  navy. 
The  political  group  which  had  forced  war 
upon  us,  although  right  in  their  reasons 
for  going  to  war,  were  utterly  wrong  in 
the  ignorant  boasts  with  which  they  pro 
claimed  our  readiness  for  battle.  Wholly 
unprepared,  we  suffered  many  defeats  on 
the  Canadian  frontier,  which  were  redeemed 
only  by  the  two  battles  of  Lundy's  Lane 
and  Chippewa.  Upon  the  seas  and  lakes 


ONE   HUNDRED   YEARS  OF  PEACE        23 

we  had  almost  unbroken  victory,  and, 
finally  at  New  Orleans,  after  peace  had 
really  been  made,  but  before  it  was  known, 
Jackson  defeated  the  veterans  of  Welling 
ton's  Peninsula  campaigns  with  a  thorough 
ness  and  a  severity  which  were  so  marked 
that  the  battle  is  hardly  alluded  to  in 
British  histories,  and  must  therefore  be 
relegated  to  the  provincial  class  of  histori 
cal  events.  Thus  the  war  came  to  an  end 
before  it  had  lasted  three  years,  and  when 
the  Treaty  of  Ghent  was  signed  that  instru 
ment  did  not  in  plain  words  dispose  of  a 
single  one  of  the  questions  which  had  made 
the  war  unavoidable  and  upon  which  the 
United  States  had  fought.  Yet,  none  the 
less,  the  war  had  settled  all  those  questions. 
Never  again  did  England  attempt  to  stop 
an  American  man-of-war  or  an  American 
merchantman  on  the  high  seas  and  take 
seamen,  whom  she  claimed  as  deserters, 
from  their  decks.  Never  again  did  she  at 
tempt  to  interfere  with  American  commerce. 
Whatever  losses  the  United  States  might 


24        ONE   HUNDRED  YEARS  OF  PEACE 

have  suffered  in  the  war,  however  much 
her  pride  might  have  been  wounded  by  the 
destruction  of  the  Capitol  at  Washington, 
the  real  victory  was  with  the  Americans. 
They  had  fought,  and  they  had  gained 
what  they  fought  for.  They  sacrificed 
nothing  —  not  an  inch  of  territory  —  by  so 
doing.  The  only  losses  suffered  by  the 
United  States  were  in  men  and  money, 
and  by  those  losses  we  had  put  an  end 
forever  to  the  humiliating  treatment  which 
had  been  meted  out  to  us  during  the 
first  decade  of  the  century.  As  the  years 
passed  by,  all  this  became  apparent,  and 
it  is  now  perfectly  plain  that  the  war  of 
1812  achieved  the  result  for  which  it  was 
fought,  by  establishing  the  position  of  the 
United  States  as  an  independent  nation 
and  restoring  the  national  self-respect. 
Although  the  treaty  of  Ghent  did  not 
show  it,  we  have  but  to  look  behind  the 
curtain  which  the  hand  of  time  has  drawn 
aside  in  order  to  learn  that  the  men  of  that 
day  in  England  recognized  what  had  hap- 


"WHAT?    YOU  YOUNG  YANKEE-NOODLE,  STRIKE  YOUR  OWN 

FATHER? " 


ONE   HUNDRED  YEARS  OF  PEACE        25 

pened,  although  they  might  not  admit  it 
to  themselves,  much  less  to  the  public. 
They  confessed  the  truth  in  many  ways, 
none  the  less  clearly  because  the  confession 
was  indirect. 

Take,  for  example,  this  letter  from  Mr. 
James,  the  naval  historian,  to  Mr.  Canning : 

MR.  W.  JAMES  TO  MR.  CANNING 

"  PERRY  VALE,  NEAR  SYDENHAM,  KENT  :  Jany.  9, 1827. 

"  The  menacing  tone  of  the  American 
President's  message  is  now  the  prevail 
ing  topic  of  conversation,  more  especially 
among  the  mercantile  men  in  whose  com 
pany  I  daily  travel  to  and  from  town. 
One  says  <  We  had  better  cede  a  point  or 
two  rather  than  go  to  War  with  the 
United  States.'  'Yes,'  says  another,  'for 
we  shall  get  nothing  but  hard  knocks 
there.'  '  True,'  adds  a  third,  '  and  what  is 
worse  than  all,  our  seamen  are  half  afraid 
to  meet  the  Americans  at  sea.'  Unfor 
tunately  this  depression  of  feeling,  this 
cowed  spirit,  prevails  very  generally  over 


26        ONE  HUNDRED   YEARS   OF  PEACE 

the  community,  even  among  persons  well 
informed  on  other  subjects,  and  who,  were 
a  British  seaman  to  be  named  with  a 
Frenchman  or  Spaniard,  would  scoff  at  the 
comparison."1 

'  The  words  of  Mr  James  show  the  effect 
upon  the  public  mind  in  England  of  the 
American  naval  victories,  which  so  pro 
foundly  interested  Napoleon.  They  pene 
trated  so  deeply  that  they  actually  reached 
the  intelligence  of  the  Liverpools  and  the 
Castlereaghs.  Even  they  felt  the  meaning 
to  England's  prestige  as  a  naval  power  of 
losing  eleven  out  of  thirteen  single,  ship 
actions  and  two  flotilla  engagements  on  the 
Great  Lakes.  Their  alarm  can  be  meas 
ured  by  the  honors  they  conferred  on  Cap 
tain  Broke,  who  commanded  the  Shannon 
when  she  defeated  the  Chesapeake  —  higher 
honors  than  Nelson  received  for  his  brilliant 
service  in  the  battle  of  Cape  St.  Vincent. 
Nor  was  this  all.  Despite  their  contempt 

1  "  Canning   Correspondence."      Edited  by  E.  J.  Stapleton. 
Vol.  II,  p.  340. 


ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  OF  PEACE    27 

for  the  Americans  and  their  loud  assertions 
of  satisfaction  with  their  successes,  as  the 
war  drew  to  its  close  the  ministers  be 
came  so  uneasy  that  they  proposed  to 
send  Wellington  to  America  to  command 
their  armies  on  the  very  scene  of  the 
victories  which  they  so  loudly  proclaimed. 
The  Duke's  letters  in  regard  to  this  pro 
posal  are  most  instructive,  and  reveal  the 
real  results  of  the  war,  for  Wellington  was 
never  the  victim  of  illusions.  He  had  in 
high  degree  the  great  faculty  of  looking 
facts  in  the  face. 

On  the  9th  of  November,  1814,  he  wrote 
from  Paris  to  Lord  Liverpool  as  follows  : 

"  I  have  already  told  you  and  Lord 
Bathurst  that  I  feel  no  objection  to  going 
to  America,  though  I  don't  promise  to 
myself  much  success  there.  I  believe  there 
are  troops  enough  there  for  the  defence  of 
Canada  forever,  and  even  for  the  accom 
plishment  of  any  reasonable  offensive  plan 
that  could  be  formed  from  the  Canadian 
frontier.  I  am  quite  sure  that  all  the 


28        ONE  HUNDRED   YEARS  OF  PEACE 

American  armies  of  which  I  have  ever 
read  would  not  beat  out  of  a  field  of  battle 
the  troops  that  went  from  Bordeaux  last 
summer,  if  common  precautions  and  care 
were  taken  of  them. 

"  That  which  appears  to  me  to  be  want 
ing  in  America  is  not  a  General,  or  General 
officers  and  troops,  but  a  naval  superiority 
on  the  Lakes.  Till  that  superiority  is  ac 
quired,  it  is  impossible,  according  to  my 
notion,  to  maintain  an  army  in  such  a 
situation  as  to  keep  the  enemy  out  of  the 
whole  frontier,  much  less  to  make  any 
conquest  from  the  enemy,  which,  with 
those  superior  means,  might,  with  reason 
able  hopes  of  success,  be  undertaken.  I 
may  be  wrong  in  this  opinion,  but  I  think 
the  whole  history  of  the  war  proves  its 
truth;  and  I  suspect  that  you  will  find 
that  Prevost  will  justify  his  misfortunes, 
which,  by  the  by,  I  am  quite  certain  are 
not  what  the  Americans  represented  them 
to  be,  by  stating  that  the  navy  were  de 
feated,  and  even  if  he  had  taken  Fort 


ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  OF  PEACE        29 

Mason  he  must  have  retired.  The  ques 
tion  is,  whether  we  can  acquire  this  naval 
superiority  on  the  Lakes.  If  we  can't,  I 
shall  do  you  but  little  good  in  America ; 
and  I  shall  go  there  only  to  prove  the  truth 
of  Prevost's  defence,  and  to  sign  a  peace 
which  might  as  well  be  signed  now.  There 
will  always,  however,  remain  this  advan 
tage,  that  the  confidence  which  I  have  ac 
quired  will  reconcile  both  the  army  and 
people  in  England  to  terms  of  which  they 
would  not  now  approve. 

"  In  regard  to  your  present  negotia 
tions,  I  confess  that  I  think  you  have  no 
right  from  the  state  of  the  war  to  de 
mand  any  concession  of  territory  from 
America.  Considering  everything,  it  is  my 
opinion  that  the  war  has  been  a  most 
successful  one,  and  highly  honorable  to 
the  British  arms;  but  from  particular  cir 
cumstances,  such  as  the  want  of  the  naval 
superiority  on  the  Lakes,  you  have  not 
been  able  to  carry  it  into  the  enemy's 
territory,  notwithstanding  your  military 


30        ONE   HUNDRED   YEARS   OF  PEACE 

success,  and  now  undoubted  military  su 
periority,  and  have  not  even  cleared  your 
own  territory  of  the  enemy  on  the  point 
of  attack.  You  cannot,  then,  on  any  prin 
ciple  of  equality  in  negotiation,  claim  a 
cession  of  territory  excepting  in  exchange 
for  other  advantages  which  you  have  in 
your  power. 

"  I  put  out  of  the  question  the  possession 
taken  by  Sir  John  Sherbrooke  between  the 
Penobscot  and  Passamaquoddy  Bay.  It  is 
evidently  only  temporary,  and  till  a  larger 
force  will  drive  away  the  few  companies  he 
has  left  there  ;  and  an  officer  might  as  well 
claim  the  sovereignty  of  the  ground  on 
which  his  piquets  stand,  or  over  which  his 
patrols  pass. 

"  Then  if  this  reasoning  be  true,  why 
stipulate  for  the  uti  possidetis  ?  You  can 
get  no  territory ;  indeed  the  state  of  your 
military  operations,  however  creditable,  does 
not  entitle  you  to  demand  any ;  and  you 
only  afford  the  Americans  a  popular  and 
creditable  ground  which,  I  believe,  their 


ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS   OF  PEACE        31 

Government  are  looking  for,  not  to  break 
off  the  negotiations,  but  to  avoid  to  make 
peace.  If  you  had  territory,  as  I  hope  you 
soon  will  have  New  Orleans,  I  should  prefer 
to  insist  upon  the  cession  of  that  province 
as  a  separate  article  than  upon  the  uti  pos- 
sidetis  as  a  principle  of  negotiation. 

And  again,  on  November  18,  1814,  he 
wrote  to  Lord  Liverpool : 

"  I  have  already  told  you  that  I  have  no 
objection  to  going  to  America,  and  I  will  go 
whenever  I  may  be  ordered.  But  does  it 
not  occur  to  your  Lordship  that,  by  appoint 
ing  me  to  go  to  America  at  this  moment, 
you  give  ground  for  belief  all  over  Europe 
that  your  affairs  there  are  in  a  much  worse 
situation  than  they  really  are  ?  And  will 
not  my  nomination  at  this  moment  be  a 
triumph  to  the  Americans  and  their  friends 
here  and  elsewhere?  It  will  give  satisfac 
tion,  and  that  only  momentary,  in  England ; 
and  it  may  have  the  effect  of  raising  hopes 
and  expectations  there  which,  we  know,  can 
not  be  realized." 


32        ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  OF  PEACE 

Despite  the  "  military  successes,"  Welling 
ton  did  not  think  that  England  could  make 
any  demand  for  territory  or  compensation, 
which  shows  that  the  "  successes  "  had  been 
as  barren  as  they  were  trivial.  The  invin 
cible  troops  from  Bordeaux  were  badly 
beaten  by  Jackson,  and  Pakenham,  one  of 
Wellington's  favorite  generals,  was  killed, 
so  that  he  did  not  capture  New  Orleans,  as 
the  Duke  had  anticipated. 

The  result  was  a  treaty  of  peace  that  on 
its  face  only  brought  peace,  which  the  Duke 
evidently  thought  was  all  England  could 
expect.  The  pity  of  it  all  was  that  there  need 
not  have  been  any  war  between  England 
and  the  United  States  in  1812,  if  England 
had  only  seen  fit  to  make  the  United  States 
a  friend  instead  of  a  foe.  But  England  did 
not  so  will,  and  the  war  at  least  taught  her 
that  the  United  States  could  no  longer  be 
bullied  and  outraged  with  impunity.  Thus 
the  war  of  1812  brought,  after  all,  a  peace 
worth  having,  and  laid  the  foundations  for 
that  larger  peace  which  has  lasted  for  a 


ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  OF  PEACE        33 

hundred  years.  During  that  time,  through 
many  vicissitudes,  the  relations  of  the  two 
countries  have  so  improved  that  we  are  now 
warranted  in  believing,  what  all  reflecting 
men  earnestly  hope,  that  another  war  be 
tween  England  and  the  United  States  has 
become  an  impossibility. 

These  larger  results  of  the  war,  so  plainly 
to  be  seen  now,  were  not  of  course  immedi 
ately  apparent.  The  old  attitude  was  still 
too  fixed,  the  old  habits  still  too  strong,  to 
be  abandoned  in  a  moment.  We  made  a 
brief  treaty  of  commerce  and  navigation  with 
England  in  June,  1815,  six  months  after  the 
conclusion  of  the  treaty  of  Ghent,  but  this 
second  treaty  disposed  of  none  of  the  out 
standing  questions  as  to  which  the  treaty 
of  Ghent  had  been  silent,  and  some  of  these 
thus  passed  over  were  of  a  nature  which 
imperatively  required  settlement.  A  British 
officer,  unconscious  apparently  that  a  war 
had  been  fought,  even  undertook  to  search 
some  of  our  vessels  upon  the  Great  Lakes, 
a  little  eccentricity  which  was  not  repeated. 


34        ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  OF  PEACE 

Despite  the  agreement  of  the  Ghent  treaty, 
England  held  on  to  Astoria  and  the  posts  in 
the  extreme  Northwest,  and,  what  was  still 
worse,  she  also  attempted  to  take  the  ground 
that  our  fishing  rights,  determined  by  the 
treaty  of  1783,  had  been  extinguished  by 
the  war.  Acting  on  this  opinion,  British 
cruisers  seized  American  fishing  vessels,  and 
the  condition  of  affairs  on  the  coasts  of 
Nova  Scotia,  Canada,  and  Newfoundland 
became  serious  in  the  extreme.  Mr.  Adams, 
then  Minister  of  the  United  States  in  Lon 
don,  brought  these  questions  to  the  atten 
tion  of  Lord  Castlereagh,  urging  upon  him 
the  necessity  of  further  treaties  to  settle 
these  disputes,  to  extend  the  commercial 
convention  of  1815,  and  to  make  some 
agreement  in  regard  to  the  slaves  who  had 
been  carried  off  after  the  conclusion  of  the 
war,  as  well  as  with  reference  to  the  disputed 
northwestern  boundary.  His  discussions 
with  Lord  Castlereagh,  which  are  detailed 
at  length  in  his  diary,  were  fruitless,  and  the 
British  Cabinet  declined  at  that  time  to 


ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  OF  PEACE    35 

enter  upon  further  negotiations.  It  may  be 
inferred  that  although  somewhat  disturbed 
by  the  events  of  the  war  of  1812  they  still 
did  not  think  it  worth  while  to  take  any 
steps  toward  improving  their  relations  with 
the  American  people. 

Soon  after  these  conferences  with  Lord 
Castlereagh  Mr.  Adams  returned  to  the 
United  States  in  order  to  take  his  place  in 
President  Monroe's  Cabinet  on  the  4th  of 
March,  1817,  and  Mr.  Rush  succeeded  him 
as  Minister  at  London.  Once  more  an 
effort  to  come  to  a  further  agreement  on 
some,  at  least,  of  the  outstanding  questions 
was  made,  and  Mr.  Rush  was  instructed 
that  if  England  would  assent  to  a  confer 
ence,  Mr.  Gallatin,  who  was  our  Minister  at 
Paris,  would  be  joined  with  him  in  the 
negotiations.  Then  it  was  that  the  effects 
of  the  war  began  to  be  really  apparent. 
The  exasperation  caused  by  the  seizure  of 
our  fishing  vessels  and  by  the  refusal  to 
carry  out  the  provisions  of  the  treaty  of 
Ghent  on  the  northwest  coast  made  it  evi- 


36        ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  OF  PEACE 

dent  that  if  something  was  not  done  the  two 
countries  would  again  be  involved  in  hostil 
ities.  This  danger,  which  would  have  made 
no  impression  upon  the  minds  of  British 
ministers  ten  years  earlier,  was  now  effective, 
and  England's  action  showed  that  when  it 
came  to  the  point  she  was  no  longer  ready 
to  go  to  extremes.  The  Ministry  changed 
its  attitude  and  assented  to  a  new  negotia 
tion.  The  result  was  the  treaty  of  1818, 
by  which  England  admitted  in  principle  the 
American  contention  that  the  fishing  rights 
conceded  in  1783  were  final  in  their  nature 
and  could  not  be  abrogated  by  war.  Mr. 
Eush  and  Mr.  Gallatin,  moreover,  succeeded 
in  obtaining  larger  concessions  in  this  respect 
than  their  instructions  called  for,  and  the 
American  fishing  rights  within  the  three- 
mile  limit,  and  also  the  right  to  dry  and 
cure  on  the  coast,  were  recognized  as  to  cer 
tain  portions  of  Newfoundland,  Nova  Scotia, 
and  Canada.  The  treaty  also  disposed  of 
the  boundary  from  the  Lake  of  the  Woods 
to  the  Rocky  Mountains,  while  from  the 


JOHN    QUINCY    ADAMS 

(From  the  portrait  by  Copley) 


ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS   OF  PEACE        37 

mountains  westward  to  the  ocean  the  country 
was  left  open  to  the  occupation  of  the  sub 
jects  and  citizens  of  both  Powers  for  a  term 
of  ten  years.  The  commercial  convention 
was  extended,  and  provision  was  made  for 
the  settlement  of  American  claims  on  account 
of  the  slaves,  who  had  been  carried  away, 
by  referring  the  whole  matter  to  the  decision 
of  some  friendly  sovereign.  Nothing  was 
said  about  the  subject  of  seamen's  rights, 
which  had  been  so  largely  the  cause  of  the 
war.  The  treaty  of  1818  was  as  silent  on 
this  topic  as  the  treaty  of  Ghent,  but  this 
question  had  in  reality  been  settled  by  the 
war  itself,  for  England,  having  found  that 
the  theme  was  one  upon  which  the  United 
States  was  always  ready  to  fight,  quietly 
allowed  her  claims  in  this  direction  to  die 
away. 

Four  years  after  the  treaty  of  1818,  and  in 
accordance  with  the  fifth  article,  the  question 
of  compensation  for  slaves  or  other  property 
carried  away  after  the  war  was  referred  to 
the  Emperor  of  Russia,  as  arbitrator,  and 


38        ONE   HUNDRED  YEARS  OF  PEACE 

the  Emperor's  award  decided  that  the  United 
States  was  entitled  to  just  indemnification 
for  all  such  private  property  taken  by  the 
British  forces,  and  more  especially  for  all 
such  slaves  as  were  carried  away  from  the 
places  and  territories  for  the  restitution  of 
which  the  treaty  stipulated.  The  adoption 
of  the  treaty  of  1818  was  also  the  signal  for 
the  restoration  to  the  United  States  of  Astoria 
and  the  other  points  on  the  coast  of  the  ex 
treme  Northwest.  In  this  way  the  treaty 
of  1818,  and  the  award  of  the  Emperor  of 
Eussia,  which  grew  out  of  it,  brought  the  re 
lations  of  the  two  countries  into  a  better  con 
dition  than  they  had  enjoyed  since  the  close 
of  the  American  Kevolution,  and  these  trea 
ties  may  be  said  to  have  constituted  the  first 
step  toward  the  improvement  of  those  rela 
tions  which  were  destined  to  grow  better,  al 
though  with  many  checks  and  hindrances, 
for  one  hundred  years  to  come. 

The  two  countries  were  also  drawn  nearer 
together  by  holding  the  same  attitude  in  re 
gard  to  the  revolting  colonies  of  Spain  in 


ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  OF  PEACE         39 

South  America,  and  by  their  common  dislike 
and  distrust  of  the  principles  of  the  Holy 
Alliance.  When  Canning  broke  away  from 
the  somewhat  musty  Toryism  which  thought 
everything  was  to  go  on  just  as  of  old,  and 
as  if  the  French  Revolution  had  never  hap 
pened,  he  not  only  powerfully  aided  the 
South  American  republics,  but  he  greatly 
strengthened  the  position  of  the  United 
States.  Canning  did  not  at  all  approve 
the  extended  form  which  his  policy  took  on 
in  the  Monroe  Doctrine,  but  his  work  could 
not  be  undone,  and  a  common  sympathy 
and  a  common  policy  in  the  South  American 
struggle  for  freedom  drew  Great  Britain  and 
the  United  States  closely  together  in  the 
eyes  of  the  world,  and,  also,  although  to  a 
less  degree,  in  their  own  estimation. 

After  the  award  of  the  Emperor  in  regard 
to  indemnity  for  the  slaves  carried  off  by  the 
British  forces  in  the  war  of  1812,  there  was, 
with  the  exception  of  the  conventions  of 
1827,  renewing  and  extending  the  treaty  of 
1818  and  providing  for  an  arbitration  of  the 


40        ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  OF   PEACE 

disputed  northeastern  boundary,  no  interna 
tional  transaction  involving  serious  differ 
ences,  and  no  treaty  between  the  two  Gov 
ernments  of  Great  Britain  and  the  United 
States,  for  twenty  years.  The  marked  effect 
which  the  war  of  1812,  as  I  have  pointed 
out,  had  produced  upon  the  attitude  of  Eng 
land  toward  the  United  States  was,  however, 
very  largely  confined  to  the  intercourse  of 
the  two  Governments.  That  intercourse 
had  become  what,  in  diplomatic  parlance,  is 
termed  "  correct,"  and  the  old  tone,  so  famil 
iar  in  British  despatches  before  the  war  of 
1812,  when  the  Ministry  treated  the  United 
States  as  if  it  were  a  collection  of  African 
tribes  and  therefore  not  entitled  to  the  ordi 
nary  good  manners  of  international  relations, 
wholly  disappeared.  Officially  we  had 
forced  our  way  into  the  family  of  nations, 
and  had  secured  the  customary  courtesies 
which  international  intercourse  demands. 
Yet  this  improvement,  which  was  of  the  first 
importance,  did  not  go  very  far  toward  alter 
ing  the  feeling  which  existed  among  the 


ONE  HUNDRED   YEARS  OF  PEACE        41 

peoples  of  the  two  countries  toward  each 
other.  Our  relations  with  Great  Britain 
after  the  treaty  of  1818  entered  upon  an 
other  phase  quite  outside  the  scope  of  gov 
ernmental  action,  which  in  its  result  did  more 
lasting  harm  to  the  cause  of  genuine  friend 
ship  between  the  two  nations  than  all  the 
best  efforts  of  diplomatists  or  public  men  on 
either  side  could  remedy  or  undo. 

Prior  to  the  war  of  1812  many  books  and 
much  writing  in  reviews  and  newspapers  ap 
peared  in  England  which  treated  of  the 
United  States  in  the  most  unfavorable  man 
ner,  and  in  a  spirit  which  at  times  might 
fairly  be  called  malignant.  This  systematic 
defamation  was  carried  on  so  generally  and 
so  persistently  that  it  gave  rise  to  a  fixed 
belief  in  the  United  States  not  only  that  it 
was  part  of  a  deliberate  plan,  but  that  some 
of  the  writers,  like  Moore,  Ashe,  and  Parkin 
son,  were  actually  in  the  pay  of  the  British 
Government,  and  that  they  wrote  for  the 
purpose  of  inflaming  English  hostility  tow 
ard  everything  American,  and  of  preventing 


42        ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  OF  PEACE 

emigration  to  England's  former  colonies. 
During  those  early  years  of  the  century  the 
people  of  the  United  States  seem  to  have 
had  the  good  sense  to  treat  these  criticisms 
with  indifference ;  and  when  the  controversy 
between  the  countries  culminated  in  war, 
printed  attacks  fell,  in  the  presence  of  real 
fighting,  unnoticed  from  the  press.  After 
the  war,  however,  and  after  the  settlement 
of  the  commercial  relations  of  the  two  coun 
tries  by  the  treaty  of  1818,  the  habit  of  de 
preciating  and  libelling  the  United  States, 
either  in  books  or  in  more  ephemeral  publi 
cations,  entered  upon  a  new  phase.  Any 
one  who  will  take  the  trouble  to  examine 
what  was  written  in  England  about  the 
United  States  during  the  period  from  1820 
to  1850  will  find  it  difficult  to  avoid  the  be 
lief  that  the  assaults  upon  the  American 
people  were  systematic  in  their  nature. 
Those  who  are  curious  in  such  matters  can 
find  an  excellent  summary  in  Mr.  McMas- 
ter's  history,  where  the  English  comments 
upon  the  United  States  from  1820  to  1840 


ONE  HUNDRED   YEARS  OF  PEACE        43 

are  vividly  described.  It  seems  almost  in 
credible  that  such  things  could  have  been  said 
and  written  by  one  ostensibly  friendly  people 
about  another  people  who  spoke  the  same 
language  and  inherited  the  same  political 
traditions.  There  were,  without  doubt, 
many  things  in  the  United  States  of  that 
day  which  were  open  to  just  and  severe  crit 
icism.  No  successful  defence,  for  example, 
could  be  entered  before  the  tribunal  of  the 
civilized  world  in  behalf  of  negro  slavery. 
But  the  English  critics  did  not  confine  them 
selves  to  that  which  was  deserving  of  criti 
cism.  Everything  in  the  United  States  was 
to  them  anathema.  The  great  reviews  gave 
many  pages  to  depicting  what  the  United 
States  was  as  they  beheld  and  interpreted  it. 
Robert  Southey  in  the  "Quarterly,"  and  Syd 
ney  Smith  in  the  " Edinburgh,"  were  only  two 
of  the  most  distinguished  among  the  many 
writers  great  and  small  who  devoted  them 
selves  not  merely  to  criticising  but  to  slander 
ing  the  United  States.  They  were  not 
ashamed  to  effect  their  purpose  by  telling 


44        ONE   HUNDRED  YEARS  OF  PEACE 

the  most  absolute  falsehoods,  and  the  lengths 
to  which  they  went  seem  now  well-nigh 
incredible.  The  men  of  America  were  said 
to  be  "  turbulent  citizens,  abandoned  Chris 
tians,  inconstant  husbands,  unnatural  fathers, 
and  treacherous  friends."  The  men  who 
had  whipped  English  vessels  in  eleven  single 
ship  fights  out  of  thirteen  were  accused 
of  having  run  away  shamefully  when  they 
could  not  fight  to  advantage.  As  they 
generally  fought  to  advantage  at  sea,  they 
had  not  often  run  away.  "  In  the  Southern 
parts  of  the  Union,"  says  another  calm 
thinker  and  judicious  critic,  "  the  rites  of 
our  holy  faith  are  almost  never  practised; 
one-third  of  the  people  have  no  church  at 
all.  The  religious  principle  is  gaining 
ground  in  the  northern  parts  of  the  Union. 
It  is  becoming  fashionable  among  the  better 
orders  of  society  to  go  to  church."  It  is 
interesting  to  consider  this  picture  of  church- 
going  becoming  fashionable  among  the 
descendants  of  the  Puritans,  but  the  writers 
had  forgotten,  probably,  that  New  England 


ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  OF  PEACE    45 

was  settled  when  it  was  a  wilderness  by 
people  who  went  there,  as  Carlyle  puts  it, 
because  they  wanted  to  hear  a  sermon 
preached  in  their  own  way.  "  The  supreme 
felicity  of  a  true-born  American  is  inaction 
of  body  and  inanity  of  mind,"  is  another 
description  of  the  people  of  the  United 
States,  and  the  reproach  of  inactivity  is  one 
of  the  most  comic  ever  addressed  to  Ameri 
cans  even  at  that  time.  Then,  of  course, 
the  British  critics  had  a  great  deal  to  say 
about  our  total  lack  of  literature  and  the 
entire  absence  among  us  of  any  men  of  dis 
tinction.  Franklin,  we  were  informed,  had 
elicited  some  useful  discoveries,  but  that 
was  because  he  had  lived  in  England  for 
some  time.  It  might  be  suggested  that 
there  were  many  other  persons  dwelling  in 
England  whose  residence  in  that  favored 
island  had  failed  to  make  them  capable  of 
eliciting  Franklin's  useful  discoveries.  It 
was  also  predicted  that  he  would  not  be 
remembered  for  fifty  years.  Prophecies  of 
fame  are  always  perilous,  and  it  is  to  be 


46        ONE  HUNDRED   YEARS  OF  PEACE 

feared  that  Franklin  is  a  good  deal  better 
remembered  to-day  than  Sydney  Smith  or 
Southey  —  the  most  considerable  of  our 
critics  in  those  days  —  and  more  read,  too, 
if  we  may  judge  from  the  fact  that  every 
civilized  nation  not  long  since  sent  eminent 
representatives  to  Philadelphia  to  celebrate 
the  two  hundredth  anniversary  of  his  birth, 
a  ceremony  which  seems  to  have  been 
omitted  in  the  case  of  Southey  and  Sydney 
Smith  when  a  century  had  elapsed  after 
their  coming  into  the  world.  Robert  Fulton, 
it  was  asserted,  stole  his  invention  from  see 
ing  the  sailing  ships  which  ran  on  the  Clyde 
with  steam-power  in  1787,  although  no 
mention  is  made  elsewhere  of  the  persons 
who  performed  that  feat,  which  does  not 
seem  to  have  travelled  beyond  the  Clyde, 
and  which  is  just  as  veracious  as  the  state 
ment,  also  made  at  that  time,  that  Fulton 
was  born  in  Paisley  in  Scotland,  when  in 
reality  he  had  the  misfortune  to  be  born  in 
Pennsylvania. 

It  is  pleasant  to  think  and  it  is  only  fair  to 


ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  OF  PEACE   47 

remember  that  at  the  very  time  when  this 
railing  against  Americans  was  at  its  height, 
a  man  of  genius,  one  of  the  great  minds  of 
England  in  those  days,  saw  the  injustice  and 
folly  of  all  this  abuse  and  could  speak  of  the 
American  people  not  only  temperately  but 
kindly.  Coleridge  in  his  familiar  talk  refers 
to  the  United  States  and  its  people  in  this 
way: 

"I  deeply  regret  the  anti- American  arti 
cles  of  some  of  the  leading  reviews.  The 
Americans  regard  what  is  said  of  them  in 
England  a  thousand  times  more  than  they 
do  anything  said  of  them  in  any  other 
country.  The  Americans  are  excessively 
pleased  with  any  kind  or  favourable  ex 
pressions,  and  never  forgive  or  forget 
any  slight  or  abuse.  It  would  be  better 
for  them  if  they  were  a  trifle  thicker- 
skinned."  .  .  . 

"  The  last  American  war  was  to  us  only 
something  to  talk  or  read  about ;  but  to 
the  Americans  it  was  the  cause  of  misery 
in  their  own  homes."  , 


48        ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  OF  PEACE 

"  I,  for  one,  do  not  call  the  sod  under  my 
feet  my  country.  But  language,  religion, 
laws,  government,  blood,  —  identity  of  these 
makes  men  of  one  country." l 

And  again  on  April  10,  1833,  he  said: 
"  The  possible  destiny  of  the  United 
States  of  America,  —  as  a  nation  of  a  hun 
dred  millions  of  freemen,  —  stretching  from 
the  Atlantic  to  the  Pacific,  living  under  the 
laws  of  Alfred,  and  speaking  the  language 
of  Shakespeare  and  Milton,  is  an  august 
conception.  Why  should  we  not  wish  to 
see  it  realized?  America  would  then  be 
England  viewed  through  a  solar  microscope : 
Great  Britain  in  a  state  of  glorious  magni 
fication!  How  deeply  to  be  lamented  is 
the  spirit  of  hostility  and  sneering  which 
some  of  the  popular  books  of  travels  have 
shown  in  treating  of  the  Americans !  They 
hate  us,  no  doubt,  just  as  brothers  hate; 
but  they  respect  the  opinion  of  an  English 
man  concerning  themselves  ten  times  as 
much  as  that  of  a  native  of  any  other  coun- 

*  Table  Talk,  May  28,  1830,  "  The  Americans." 


ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  OF   PEACE        49 

try  on  earth.  A  very  little  humouring 
of  their  prejudices,  and  some  courtesy  of 
language  and  demeanour  on  the  part  of 
Englishmen,  would  work  wonders,  even 
as  it  is,  with  the  public  mind  of  the 
Americans."  .  .  . 

"  Captain  Basil  Hall's  book  is  certainly 
very  entertaining  and  instructive  but,  in  my 
judgment,  his  sentiments  upon  many  points, 
and  more  especially  his  mode  of  expression, 
are  unwise  and  uncharitable.  After  all,  are 
not  most  of  the  things  shown  up  with  so 
much  bitterness  by  him  merely  national 
foibles,  parallels  to  which  every  people  has 
and  must  of  necessity  have  ?  "  l 

One  feels  disposed  to  say  to-day  that  the 
slander  and  vilification  by  Sydney  Smith 
and  Southey,  and  by  the  pack  of  unknown 
writers  who  followed  their  example,  is  more 
than  compensated  by  the  kind,  wise  word# 
of  Coleridge,  especially  as  Coleridge  is  still 
read  and  remembered,  while  the  others, 
with  the  exception  of  Sydney  Smith,  are 

i «  Table  Talk." 


50        ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  OF  PEACE 

quite  forgotten  and  their  books  and  articles 
are  to  the  world  at  large  as  unknown  as  if 
they  had  never  existed.  But  at  the  time 
the  words  of  those  who  defamed  were 
printed  and  read,  while  Coleridge's  talk  was 
still  unpublished. 

These  few  passages  which  I  have  quoted 
from  the  Reviews  give,  however,  a  very  faint 
impression  of  English  criticism  upon  America 
at  that  time,  although  such  stuff  is  hardly 
to  be  dignified  by  the  name  of  criticism.  It 
was  in  reality  childish  and  rather  ignorant 
abuse.  But  now,  contrary  to  what  had 
happened  in  the  earlier  years,  the  Ameri 
cans,  unfortunately,  were  roused  into  tak 
ing  it  up  and  making  elaborate  replies. 
They  had  not  much  difficulty  in  con 
troverting  the  false  statements  and  misrep 
resentations  so  freely  made,  but  they  did 
not  stop  there.  They  naturally  availed 
themselves  of  the  tu  quoque  argument,  and 
it  was  not  at  all  difficult  in  the  history 
of  England  to  find  facts  which,  with  ap 
propriate  twists  and  bendings,  made  the 


ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  OF  PEACE        51 

English  people  appear  in  a  very  unenviable 
light. 

This  warfare  of  books  and  magazine  arti 
cles  continued  and  was  much  emphasized 
and  embittered  when  it  was  waged  on  a  large 
scale  by  popular  writers  like  Mrs.  Trollope 
and  Captain  Hall.  Everything  else,  how 
ever,  sank  into  insignificance  compared  to 
the  effect  of  one  book,  much  more  temperate 
than  any  of  the  others,  but  written  by  a 
great  genius  who  saw  fit  later  to  sharpen 
what  he  had  said  in  a  book  of  travels  by 
carrying  his  animosity  into  the  realms  of 
fiction.  Charles  Dickens  came  to  the  United 
States  in  1841.  He  was  received  with  an 
outburst  of  affectionate  and  admiring  en 
thusiasm  which  has  rarely  been  seen  any 
where  in  the  case  of  a  man  of  letters.  He 
went  home  and  wrote  a  book  about  us 
called  "  American  Notes,"  and  then  he  im 
mortalized  certain  types  of  American  char 
acter  in  "Martin  Chuzzlewit."  He  said  a 
great  deal  that  was  very  true  and  entirely 
deserved.  The  characters  of  the  novel 


52        ONE  HUNDRED   YEARS  OF  PEACE 

were  unfortunately  in  many  respects  only 
too  real,  and,  deeply  angered  as  we  were 
at  the  time,  it  may  be  safely  said  that 
Elijah  Pogram  and  Jefferson  Brick  and 
Hannibal  Chollop,  General  Choke  and  Mrs. 
Hominy  have  an  immortality  more  assured 
among  the  American  people  than  anywhere 
else,  for  the  anger  has  long  since  died  away, 
while  the  truth  of  the  satire  and  the  comi 
cality  of  those  beings  created  by  the  magic 
touch  of  genius  still  remain.  But  at  the 
time  the  resentment  was  intense.  How  in 
tense  the  feeling  was  we  can  see  from  the 
following  entry  made  by  Emerson  in  his 
journal  on  November  25  (1842). 

"  Yesterday  I  read  Dickens'  '  American 
Notes.'  It  answers  its  end  very  well, 
which  plainly  was  to  make  a  readable  book, 
nothing  more.  Truth  is  not  his  object 
for  a  single  instant,  but  merely  to  make 
good  points  in  a  lively  sequence,  and  he 
proceeds  very  well.  As  an  account  of 
America  it  is  not  to  be  considered  for  a 
moment :  it  is  too  short,  and  too  narrow, 


ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  OF  PEACE        53 

too  superficial,  and  too  ignorant,  too  slight, 
and  too  fabulous,  and  the  man  totally  un 
equal  to  the  work.  A  very  lively  rattle  on 
that  nuisance,  a  sea  voyage,  is  the  first 
chapter ;  and  a  pretty  fair  example  of  the 
historical  truth  of  the  whole  book.  We  can 
hear  throughout  every  page  the  dialogue 
between  the  author  and  his  publisher,  — 
'  Mr.  Dickens,  the  book  must  be  entertain 
ing —  that  is  the  essential  point.  Truth? 
Damn  truth !  I  tell  you,  it  must  be  enter 
taining.'  As  a  picture  of  American  man 
ners  nothing  could  be  falser.  No  such  con 
versations  ever  occur  in  this  country  in 
real  life,  as  he  relates.  He  has  picked  up 
and  noted  with  eagerness  each  odd  local 
phrase  that  he  met  with,  and,  when  he  had 
a  story  to  relate,  has  joined  them  together, 
so  that  the  result  is  the  broadest  caricature; 
and  the  scene  might  as  truly  have  been  laid 
in  Wales  or  in  England  as  in  the  States. 
Monstrous  exaggeration  is  an  easy  secret  of 
romance.  But  Americans  who,  like  some 
of  us  Massachusetts  people,  are  not  fond 


54        ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  OF  PEACE 

of  spitting,  will  go  from  Maine  to  New 
Orleans,  and  meet  no  more  annoyances  than 
we  should  in  Britain  or  France.  So  with 
'yes/  so  with  ' fixings/  so  with  soap  and 
towels ;  and  all  the  other  trivialities  which 
this  trifler  detected  in  travelling  over  half 
the  world.  The  book  makes  but  a  poor 
apology  for  its  author,  who  certainly  ap 
pears  in  no  dignified  or  enviable  position." l 
Emerson  was  not  only  a  great  man  and 
a  man  of  genius  but  he  had  one  of  the  cool 
est,  calmest,  and  best-balanced  minds  con 
ceivable.  Yet  he  could  write  in  this  fashion 
of  the  "American  Notes."  If  Emerson  felt 
in  this  way,  and  of  course  there  is  much  truth 
in  what  he  says,  we  can  imagine  the  feelings 
of  the  average  American  about  Dickens  at 
that  moment.  Whether  what  was  said  in 
the  "  Notes"  or  in  "  Martin  Chuzzlewit "  at  a 
later  day  was  just  or  unjust,  true  or  untrue, 
there  was  a  widespread  feeling  in  the  United 
States  that,  whoever  else  might  find  fault 
with  and  ridicule  us,  Charles  Dickens,  after 

1  Emerson's  Journals,  1841-1844,  pp.  312-313. 


ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  OF  PEACE        55 

the  reception  which  had  been  given  him, 
was  debarred  by  every  rule  of  loyalty  and 
good  manners  from  doing  so.  That  this 
feeling  was  natural  and  that  the  rule  was 
one  which  could  be  both  accepted  and  ob 
served  was  made  visible  to  all  men  not  long 
after  the  visit  of  Dickens. 

A  few  years  later  another  great  English 
novelist  came  to  the  United  States;  came 
twice,  in  fact,  and  delivered  lectures.  No 
doubt,  with  his  keen  and  penetrating  obser 
vation,  he  perceived  many  things  which 
lent  themselves  to  criticism,  to  ridicule,  and 
to  satire,  of  which  no  living  writer  was  more 
capable  than  he.  He  was  by  temperament 
very  sensitive  to  just  those  shortcomings 
which  are  common  and  repellent  in  a  crude 
and  unformed  society.  He  was  urged  in 
every  way  and  tempted  with  the  promise  of 
great  profits  to  write  a  book  about  America, 
but  he  declined.  He  had  been  cordially  re 
ceived  in  the  United  States;  he  had  lived 
in  our  houses ;  he  had  accepted  our  hospi 
tality  ;  only  kindness  had  been  shown  him. 


56        ONE  HUNDRED   YEARS  OF  PEACE 

Others  might  write  what  they  pleased  about 
America,  but  he  would  not.  Let  me  recall 
what  he  himself  said  in  a  "  Roundabout " 
paper : 

"  Yonder  drawing  was  made  in  a  country 
where  there  was  such  hospitality,  friendship, 
kindness,  shown  to  the  humble  designer  that 
his  eyes  do  not  care  to  look  for  faults  or  his 
pen  to  note  them.  .  .  .  How  hospitable 
they  were,  those  Southern  men !  In  the 
North  itself  the  welcome  was  not  kinder,  as 
I,  who  had  eaten  Northern  and  Southern 
salt,  can  testify !  " 

How  kind  and  generous  it  all  is,  and  how 
pleasant  it  is  now,  to  every  one  who  loves 
the  memory  of  the  genius  that  created  Becky 
Sharp  and  drew  the  character  of  Colonel 
Newcome,  to  know  that  he  was,  above  all 
things,  loyal  and  true.  We  had  on  our  own 
side,  too,  a  distinguished  man  of  letters 
whose  conception  of  his  duty  toward  the 
two  nations  who  read  his  books  was  to  cher 
ish  friendship  and  kindliness  and  not  to  seek 
for  faults  and  embitter  feelings.  Let  me  de- 


ONE  HUNDRED   YEARS   OF  PEACE        57 

scribe  him  in  Thackeray's  words,  for  they 
both  thought  alike  in  this  great  matter  which 
involves  nothing  less  than  good-will  among 
men : 

"Two  men,  famous,  admired,  beloved, 
have  just  left  us,  the  Goldsmith  and  Gibbon 
of  our  time.  .  .  .  One  was  the  first  Ambas 
sador  whom  the  New  World  of  Letters  sent 
to  the  Old.  He  was  born  almost  with  the 
republic ;  the  pater  patrice  had  laid  his  hand 
on  the  child's  head.  He  bore  Washington's 
name ;  he  came  amongst  us  bringing  the 
kindest  sympathy,  the  most  artless,  smiling 
good-will.  His  new  country  (which  some 
people  here  might  be  disposed  to  regard 
rather  superciliously)  could  send  us,  as  he 
showed  in  his  own  person,  a  gentleman  who, 
though  himself  born  in  no  very  high  sphere, 
was  most  finished,  polished,  easy,  witty, 
quiet ;  and,  socially,  the  equal  of  the  most 
refined  Europeans.  If  Irving's  welcome  in 
England  was  a  kind  one,  was  it  not  also 
gratefully  remembered  ?  If  he  ate  our  salt, 
did  he  not  pay  us  with  a  thankful  heart  ? 


58        ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  OF  PEACE 

Who  can  calculate  the  amount  of  friendliness 
and  good  feeling  for  our  country  which  this 
writer's  generous  and  untiring  regard  for  us 
disseminated  in  his  own  ?  His  books  are 
read  by  millions  of  his  countrymen  ;  whom 
he  has  taught  to  love  England,  and  why  to 
love  her.  It  would  have  been  easy  to  speak 
otherwise  than  he  did;  to  inflame  national 
rancors,  which,  at  the  time  when  he  first  be 
came  known  as  a  public  writer,  war  had  just 
renewed  ;  to  cry  down  the  old  civilization  at 
the  expense  of  the  new ;  to  point  out  our 
faults,  arrogance,  shortcomings,  and  give  the 
republic  to  infer  how  much  she  was  the 
parent  state's  superior.  There  are  writers 
enough  in  the  United  States,  honest  and 
otherwise,  to  preach  that  kind  of  doctrine. 
But  the  good  Irving,  the  peaceful,  the 
friendly,  had  no  place  for  bitterness  in  his 
heart,  and  no  scheme  but  kindness." 

Unfortunately,  the  example  of  Irving  and 
Thackeray  had  but  few  imitators.  Every 
thing  which  these  two  said  and  wrote  or 
omitted  to  say  and  write  was  forgotten  in 


ONE  HUNDRED   YEARS  OF  PEACE        59 

the  clash  of  men  who  took  a  precisely  op 
posite  course,  to  the  great  detriment  of  all 
concerned,  and  the  bitterness  was  concen 
trated  around  the  "  American  Notes "  and 
their  author,  whom  the  American  people 
had  loved  and  honored  and  taken  to  their 
hearts.  It  was  this  feeling  that  the  man 
whom  they  had  admired  and  cheered  and 
feasted  had  been  disloyal  which  made  Dick- 
ens's  criticism  and  ridicule  rankle  more  than 
that  of  all  others.  But  if  we  leave  the  per 
sonal  equation  aside,  Dickens  was  only  the 
culmination  of  the  general  commentary  which 
England  then  made  and  apparently  thought 
it  well  to  make  upon  the  United  States. 
Both  people  spoke  and  read  the  same  lan 
guage.  In  those  days  they  were  still  closely 
akin.  We  read  English  books,  copied 
English  fashions,  and  looked  up  to  English 
standards  in  society  and  in  literature,  and 
therefore  all  that  was  said  in  England  of  the 
kind  which  has  just  been  indicated  went 
home  and  made  Americans  very  angry  and 
very  sore.  We  were  a  new  people,  or  rather 


60         ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  OF  PEACE 

we  were  the  offspring  of  an  old  people  settled 
in  a  new  country,  and  we  were  young,  very 
self-conscious,  very  sensitive,  and  we  felt  at 
tacks  which  would  be  no  more  noticed  to-day 
than  the  rattle  of  a  dead  autumn  leaf  flutter 
ing  before  the  wind.  We  replied  to  the 
criticisms  in  a  savage  and  intemperate  man 
ner.  Sometimes  we  wounded;  generally 
we  produced  no  effect.  What  we  felt 
most  was  the  injustice  of  painting  everything 
black.  As  I  have  already  said,  there  was 
a  great  deal  in  America  to  be  criticised. 
Dickens's  wrath  about  copyright,  for  in 
stance,  was  wholly  justifiable.  Our  own 
literary  possessions  were  still  meagre,  and 
so  we  stood  like  highwaymen  along  the 
roadside  of  literature  and  robbed  the 
passers-by,  the  very  men  who  "  helped 
us  to  enjoy  life  or  taught  us  to  endure  it." 
To  plunder  others  in  this  fashion  was  not 
only  indefensible  but  most  dishonest.  The 
default  on  the  State  bonds,  especially 
upon  those  of  Pennsylvania,  which  edged 
the  blade  of  Sydney  Smith,  who  was 


ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  OF  PEACE         61 

a  personal  loser,  was  likewise  indefensible, 
and  was  also  utterly  discreditable.  To  the 
great  reproach  of  slavery  there  was,  of 
course,  no  reply,  no  excuse  to  be  made. 
But  these  dark  spots  were  not  the  whole 
picture,  and  yet  by  gross  misrepresentation, 
and  even  by  actual  falsehood,  the  effort  was 
made  to  prove  that  everything  was  black. 
For  instance,  in  "  Martin  Chuzzlewit "  the 
impression  is  sedulously  and  strongly  given 
that  the  entire  United  States  west  of  the 
Alleghanies  is  one  huge  swamp  breathing 
forth  fever  and  ague.  One  has  but  to  look 
at  the  illustrations  of  Mrs.  Trollope's  book 
to  see  the  country  Dickens  described, 
and  it  would  almost  seem  as  if  the  Ameri 
can  chapters  in  "  Martin  Chuzzlewit "  were 
written  "up"  to  Mrs.  Trollope's  pictures. 
No  doubt  such  ugly  and  unwholesome  spots 
existed  then,  and  exist  now,  but  as  a  de 
scription  of  so  large  a  country  as  the  United 
States  it  was  not  strictly  accurate.  Yet 
this  was  the  prevailing  tone.  Everything 
was  bad  —  land,  people,  institutions.  The 


62        ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  OF  PEACE 

result  naturally  was  that  the  just  criticism 
had  no  effect  and  was  merely  lost  in  the 
cloud  of  invective  and  abuse.  Many  of  the 
deficiencies  were  those  which  time  alone 
could  supply,  but  this  was  not  stated  any 
more  than  it  was  admitted  that  there  was 
also  in  America  much  that  was  good  and 
not  a  little  that  was  great.  In  the  days 
when  we  were  still  colonies  Edmund  Burke 
and  the  elder  Pitt  pictured  the  people  of 
America  and  what  they  had  achieved  in 
language  to  which  Parliament  listened  then, 
and  which  the  world  has  heeded  ever  since. 
In  the  first  half  of  the  nineteenth  century  the 
American  people  were  engaged  in  the  con 
quest  of  a  continent ;  they  were  bringing  a 
wilderness  within  the  grasp  of  civilized  man, 
and  at  the  same  time  they  were  making  a 
great  experiment  in  government,  and  had 
established  religious  freedom  and  individ 
ual  liberty  on  a  scale  never  known  before. 
Their  political  example  had  affected  the  en 
tire  Western  world,  and  this  was  really  the 
underlying  reason  for  the  attacks  upon  them, 


ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  OF  PEACE         63 

because  their  success  alarmed  the  ruling 
classes  of  England  and  of  Europe,  which 
were  likewise  the  vocal  classes,  in  command 
of  the  press  and  the  platform.  None  the 
less,  these  endeavors  and  achievements  in 
that  great  new  world  were  quite  as  worthy 
of  note  as  our  crude  manners,  our  rough 
ways  on  the  Western  frontier,  our  lack  of 
the  luxuries  of  wealth,  and  of  the  many 
other  lesser  things  in  which  we  fell  short  of 
the  European  standards.  But  the  good  was 
never  noticed  and  the  bad  was  exaggerated 
beyond  the  bounds  of  truth.  With  the  ex 
ception  of  what  Dickens  and  Sydney  Smith 
wrote,  everything  then  said  and  written  about 
the  United  States  and  its  people  is  quite 
forgotten,  except  by  the  historian,  and  is 
as  dead  to  the  world  as  the  nun  who  has 
taken  the  black  veil.  But  looking  back 
over  that  time,  the  period  of  the  English 
commentators  on  America,  one  can  see 
very  plainly  now  the  infinite  mischief 
which  was  done.  In  point  of  taste  and 
good  feeling  there  is  little  to  choose 


64        ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  OF  PEACE 

between  the  English  attacks  upon  the 
United  States  and  those  of  Americans 
upon  England,  although  we  had  the  great 
disadvantage  of  feeling  much  more  keenly 
about  it  than  our  adversaries.  Yet  England 
herself  was  sensitive  enough  when  Emerson 
and  Hawthorne,  two  really  great  writers, 
ventured,  in  the  most  perfectly  proper  and 
temperate  way,  to  point  out  that  in  certain 
respects  the  English  people  were,  after  all, 
merely  human.  Emerson  and  Hawthorne, 
of  course,  are  still  read  and  remembered, 
quite  as  much  if  not  so  widely  as  Dickens, 
but  they  do  not  come  within  the  class 
that  I  have  been  trying  to  describe. 
They  were  later,  and  their  tone  was 
larger  and  more  modern,  their  criticism 
more  subtle,  their  praise  ample,  and  their 
temper  fair.  During  the  time  which  I 
have  attempted  to  portray  the  harm 
done  was  very  great.  Englishmen  gave 
comparatively  little  attention  to  us  or  to 
what  we  thought  or  said,  but  the  attacks  of 
her  writers  upon  the  United  States,  running 


ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  OF  PEACE         65 

through  a  period  of  years,  bred  a  bitter 
hatred  of  England  among  the  American 
people,  which  has  gradually  and  fortunately 
grown  into  a  cold  but  cheerful  indifference, 
and  this,  in  turn,  it  is  to  be  hoped,  will  be 
come  something  more  and  better  than 
occasional  friendship  between  individual 
members  of  the  two  nations. 

The  regret  which  one  feels  as  one  looks 
back  over  the  writings  of  that  period  brim 
ming  over  with  bitterness  and  anger  is  en 
hanced  by  considering  the  good  which  might 
have  been  done  by  more  serious  works  con 
ceived  in  a  different  spirit.  We  have  two 
conspicuous  examples  of  such  books  ready 
to  our  hands  and  possessed  of  an  enduring 
reputation  denied  to  those  who  wrote  of  the 
United  States  only  to  decry  and  wound. 
De  Tocqueville  is  of  the  same  period.  His 
famous  book  is  by  no  means  filled  with  un 
diluted  praise.  He  both  warned  and  criti 
cised,  but  he  took  America  seriously  and  he 
was  studied  and  admired.  In  our  own  time  a 
distinguished  English  statesman  has  written 


66         ONE  HUNDRED   YEARS  OF  PEACE 

a  book  upon  our  body  politic  and  our  meth 
ods  of  government.  He  has  seen  what  was 
good  as  well  as  what  was  evil  in  our  politics 
and  our  political  system.  He  is  a  severe 
but  just  judge.  Far  from  resenting  his 
strictures,  Americans  regard  his  book  with 
admiration  and  as  high  authority.  .It  .may 
be  truly  said  that  no  Englishman  has  ever 
been  more  popular  in  the  United  States  than 
James  Bryce,  the  author  of  the  "  American 
Commonwealth. " 

The  final  question  which  arises  in  one's 
mind  when  contemplating  that  time  in  the 
dry,  cool  light  of  history  is  whether,  on 
the  whole,  it  benefited  England  and  was 
profitable  to  her  to  breed  enmity  and  bitter 
ness  in  a  country  which  had  every  natural 
disposition  to  be  her  friend.  The  Govern 
ment  had  ceased  to  aim  deliberately  at  alien 
ating  the  United  States  after  the  treaty  of 
Ghent  was  made  ;  and  then  it  was  that  Eng 
lish  writers,  great  and  small,  took  up  the 
work  which  the  Government,  for  the  time 
at  least,  had  abandoned.  Their  operations 


ONE   HUNDRED   YEARS   OF   PEACE         67 

were  less  dangerous  because  the  issues  of 
peace  and  war  did  not  lie  in  their  hands,  but 
in  creating  a  settled  hate  on  the  part  of  one 
people  for  another  they  were  more  effective 
than  diplomatists  and  ministers,  because 
they  wounded  personal  pride  and  made  each 
member  of  the  community,  according  to  his 
temperament,  feel  humiliation  or  anger,  in 
his  own  particular  person.  To-day  such 
writings  on  the  part  of  the  English  or  of 
any  other  nation  would  produce  no  effect  of 
the  slightest  consequence  in  the  United  States. 
After  nations  pass  a  certain  point  in  their 
rise  to  greatness  abuse  by  inhabitants  of 
other  countries  may  make  the  person  utter 
ing  the  abuse  unpopular,  but  has  no  effect 
upon  the  nation  or  people  abused.  Be 
tween  1820  and  1850,  when  the  United 
States  was  still  struggling  in  the  first  stages 
of  nation-building,  when  it  was  still  largely 
a  wilderness  and  its  pioneers  were  forcing 
the  frontier  westward  with  daring  and  pain 
ful  effort,  this  abusive  and  savage  criti 
cism,  whether  just  or  not,  was  deeply  felt. 


68         ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  OF  PEACE 

That  it  had  an  improving  or  instructive 
effect  upon  Americans,  in  view  of  the  man 
ner  in  which  the  instruction  was  admin 
istered,  may  well  be  doubted,  but  in  making 
them  angry  and  in  turning  them  against 
England,  and  causing  them  to  look  with  the 
friendly  eyes  of  preference  on  almost  every 
other  nation,  it  was  highly  successful.  In 
the  relations  of  two  great  nations,  speaking 
the  same  language  and  believing  in  the  same 
political  principles,  it  is  not  a  pleasant  period 
to  look  upon  in  the  clear  light  of  seventy 
years  later  ;  yet  I  think,  if  rightly  considered, 
it  is  not  without  its  lesson,  not  only  to  those 
concerned,  but  to  all  who  wish  to  maintain 
good  relations  among  the  nations  of  the 
earth. 

During  this  same  period,  which  may  be 
called,  as  I  have  said,  the  period  of  the 
commentators  and  the  critics,  certain  events 
occurred  of  a  much  more  perilous  nature, 
which  brought  the  two  countries  to  the 
verge  of  war.  In  the  nature  of  things, 
we  were  certain  to  have  many  more 


ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  OF  PEACE         69 

matters  of  difference  with  Great  Britain 
than  with  any  other  country,  because  her 
provinces  lay  to  the  north  of  the  United 
States  and  furnished  a  common  boundary 
line  three  thousand  miles  in  length.  What 
was  much  worse  was  the  fact  that  this  boun 
dary  line  was  left  largely  unsettled  by  the 
treaties  of  1818  and  1827.  One  of  the  three 
treaties  of  1827  provided  for  arbitration  as 
to  the  northeast  boundary,  and  the  question 
was  referred  to  the  King  of  Holland  as 
arbitrator.  In  1831  the  King  rendered  a 
decision,  but  as  he  really  decided  only  two 
points  and  merely  expressed  an  opinion  as 
to  all  the  others,  his  award  was  rejected  by 
the  United  States  upon  the  ground  that  it 
was  not  a  decision  of  the  questions  submitted. 
Thus  the  entire  matter  was  left  open,  and 
serious  troubles  soon  began  to  arise  along 
the  northeastern  boundary  between  the 
people  of  Maine  on  the  one  side  and  those 
of  the  adjoining  British  provinces  on  the 
other.  An  American  surveyor  was  arrested. 
The  State  of  Maine  appropriated  money  and 


70         ONE  HUNDRED   YEARS  OF  PEACE 

sent  a  force  of  men  in  Aroostook  County  to 
the  border.  There  were  similar  difficulties 
in  Madawaska.  The  English  Government 
postponed  action,  and  the  question  began  to 
assume  a  very  angry  and  threatening  appear 
ance.  Meanwhile  another  disturbance  broke 
out  along  the  New  York  and  Vermont  fron 
tiers.  There  had  been  a  rebellion  in  Canada 
against  the  bad  government  of  that  day, 
and  the  defeated  patriots  took  refuge  in  the 
United  States,  where  they  met  with  a  cordial 
reception.  Considerable  bodies  of  volun 
teers  were  raised.  Secret  organizations  were 
formed  to  support  the  rebellious  Canadians, 
a  party  of  whom,  under  the  leadership  of 
William  McKeiizie,  seized  Navy  island,  in 
the  Niagara  river,  and  fortified  it.  The 
authorities  in  Canada  despatched  Colonel 
McNab  to  guard  the  frontier  against  this 
invasion,  and  McNab  sent  out  a  party  of 
armed  men  who  seized  and  burned  the 
steamer  Caroline,  which  had  been  used  to 
convey  volunteers  and  munitions  of  war  to 
Navy  island.  The  destruction  of  the  Caro- 


ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  OF  PEACE         71 

line  took  place  at  Fort  Schlosser,  on  Amer 
ican  territory,  and  was,  of  course,  a  gross 
violation  of  the  sovereignty  of  the  United 
States.  The  Government  of  the  United 
States  and  the  State  governments  behaved, 
fortunately,  with  entire  propriety  and  broke 
up  and  checked,  so  far  as  they  could,  the 
movements  of  the  patriots  and  their  sympa 
thizers.  Nevertheless,  acts  of  violence  con 
tinued  on  both  sides.  A  party  of  refugees 
in  the  Thousand  Islands  crossed  to  the 
Canadian  side  and  burned  the  steamer  Sir 
Robert  Peel  as  a  set-off  for  the  Caroline, 
while  the  American  steamer  Telegraph  was 
fired  upon.  It  would  require  a  volume  of 
reasonable  size  to  give  a  history  of  these 
border  troubles,  which  are  not  without 
much  human  interest,  but  which  have  all 
fallen  quite  dim  now,  and  indeed  are  hardly 
remembered  except  by  the  historian.  In  a 
brief  review  of  the  relations  of  England  and 
the  United  States  during  one  hundred  years 
it  is  impossible  to  do  more  than  allude  to 
them.  It  must  suffice  to  say  here  that  the 


72         ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  OF  PEACE 

whole  border  from  Maine  to  Michigan  was 
not  only  disturbed,  but  in  a  most  inflamed 
and  explosive  condition.  It  was  just  one  of 
those  situations  where  war  might  have  been 
precipitated  at  any  moment  by  reckless  men 
who  were  quarrelling  over  the  possession  of 
land  and  where  a  rebellion  existed  in  one 
country  which  excited  warm  sympathy  in 
the  other.  In  addition,  a  case  arose,  grow 
ing  out  of  the  destruction  of  the  Caroline, 
which  aroused  animosities  even  more  than 
the  actual  troubles  along  the  border.  An 
American  named  Durfee  had  been  shot  and 
killed  on  the  Caroline.  Two  years  later  a" 
Canadian  named  Alexander  McLeod  came 
down  from  Canada  and  while  he  was  drunk 
bragged  of  having  himself  killed  Durfee. 
He  was,  of  course,  arrested,  although  it  was 
afterwards  shown  that  he  had  not  been 
present  at  the  destruction  of  the  Caroline. 
But  on  his  own  admission  it  was  perfectly 
proper  to  arrest  him.  The  crime  had  been 
committed  on  American  soil  and  McLeod 
had  confessed  himself  to  be  the  guilty  inan, 


ONE  HUNDRED   YEARS  OF  PEACE         73 

yet  none  the  less  the  English  Government 
flew  into  a  fine  rage  and  undertook  to  inter 
fere  with  the  action  of  the  courts.  Not  con 
tent  with  this,  they  also  saw  fit  to  offer  their 
advice  in  regard  to  the  case  of  the  Amistad, 
a  Spanish  vessel  which  had  been  seized  by 
the  slaves  whom  she  was  carrying  and  had 
been  run  ashore  at  Long  Island,  where  she 
was  taken  possession  of  by  the  Government. 
There  was  a  very  grave  question  as  to 
what  was  to  be  done  with  the  negroes,  but 
no  part  of  the  question  concerned  England 
the  least  in  the  world,  and  her  benevolent 
advice,  coming  just  at  that  moment,  was 
deeply  resented.  In  this  condition  of  pub 
lic  sentiment,  with  England  on  the  edge  of 
declaring  war  on  account  of  McLeod,  and 
with  the  popular  feeling  in  the  United  States 
greatly  excited  by  the  border  troubles  and 
by  the  case  of  the  Amistad,  the  Democrats 
went  out  of  power  and  the  Whigs  came  in, 
with  Mr.  Webster  as  Secretary  of  State. 
The  situation  was  one  of  extreme  and 
dangerous  complexity.  The  British  having 


74        ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  OF  PEACE 

avowed  the  destruction  of  the  Caroline  to 
be  a  Governmental  act,  it  was  obvious  that 
McLeod  could  not  properly  be  held,  but  his 
case  was  in  the  State  courts  of  New  York, 
over  the  proceedings  of  which  the  United 
States  had  no  control.  Mr.  Webster  endeav 
ored  to  secure  the  discharge  of  McLeod,  but 
in  vain,  and  the  New  York  courts  refused  to 
grant  a  writ  of  habeas  corpus.  On  the 
other  side,  Mr.  Fox,  the  British  Minister, 
saw  fit  to  adopt  a  most  offensive  tone, 
which  Mr.  Webster  was  the  last  man  in 
the  world  to  accept  with  tameness  or  in 
a  meek  spirit.  He  took  a  firm  attitude 
with  England,  while  suggesting  privately 
that  negotiations  should  be  opened  for  es 
tablishing  a  conventional  northeastern  line, 
and,  as  has  just  been  said,  he  used  his  best 
efforts  to  secure  the  discharge  of  McLeod. 
This  perilous  situation  was  fortunately 
relieved  by  two  incidents  which  came  to 
pass  outside  the  efforts  of  the  Government. 
McLeod  was  acquitted  at  Utica  by  the  simple 
process  of  proving  an  alibi ;  and  the  Whigs 


DANIEL    WEBSTER 

(From  portrait  in  State  Department) 


ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  OF  PEACE         75 

were  beaten  in  England,  an  event  which 
made  Lord  Aberdeen  Secretary  of  State  for 
Foreign  Affairs  in  place  of  Lord  Palmerston. 
As  has  usually  happened  since  the  war  of 
1812,  we  fared  much  better  with  a  Tory  or 
Conservative  administration  than  we  did 
with  Whigs  or  Liberals.  Response  was 
now'made  to  Mr.  Webster's  proposal  to  es 
tablish  a  conventional  line,  and  in  January, 
1842,  information  reached  Mr.  Webster  from 
Mr.  Everett  that  Lord  Aberdeen  had  deter 
mined  to  assent  to  our  proposition,  and  had 
sent  Lord  Ashburton  as  special  Minister  to 
the  United  States  to  settle  the  boundary  and 
all  outstanding  questions.  This  marked  a 
sharp  change  in  the  English  attitude,  and 
was  no  doubt  owing  in  a  measure  at  least  to 
the  confidence  which  was  felt  in  Mr.  Webster 
personally.  Indeed,  it  is  to  Mr.  Webster 
that  we  owe  the  settlement  at  this  time  of 
questions  which  had  been  so  inflamed  by 
extraneous  and  accidental  circumstances  as 
to  have  brought  the  two  countries  to  the 
verge  of  war. 


76         ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  OF  PEACE 

Mr.  Webster's  position  had  throughout 
been  one  of  extreme  difficulty.  Not  only 
did  he  have  to  deal  with  the  McLeod  case, 
but  the  border  was  in  a  constant  ferment 
and  he  was  compelled  to  be  constantly  on 
the  alert  to  prevent,  if  possible,  outbreaks 
which  might  precipitate  hostilities  at  any 
moment.  In  addition  to  all  this  his  own 
personal  situation  was  most  trying.  General 
Harrison,  who  had  made  him  Secretary  of 
State,  died  a  month  after  his  inauguration, 
and,  although  President  Tyler  gave  his  en 
tire  confidence  to  Mr.  Webster,  he  immedi 
ately  broke  with  the  Whig  party,  which  had 
elected  him,  and  Mr.  Webster's  position  be 
came,  in  consequence,  a  very  difficult  one. 
The  Whigs  felt  that  he  ought  immediately 
to  resign.  He  was  denounced  as  a  traitor  to 
Whig  principles,  and  there  was  much  bitter 
ness  of  feeling.  Mr.  Webster,  however, 
understood  the  situation  between  this  coun 
try  and  Great  Britain  better  than  any  one 
else.  He  knew  how  dangerous  it  was.  He 
felt,  and  rightly,  that  if  any  one  was  able  to 


ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  OF  PEACE         77 

bring  it  to  a  peaceful  conclusion  he  could, 
and  that  whatever  his  party  associates  might 
say  or  think,  it  was  his  plain  duty  to  remain  in 
the  Cabinet  until  the  English  question  was 
settled.  Unmoved,  therefore,  by  the  attacks 
made  upon  him,  he  remained  at  his  post, 
and  it  was  well  for  the  country  that  he  did 
so.  Lord  Ashburton  arrived  in  the  United 
States  on  the  4th  of  April,  1842,  and  the  re 
sult  of  his  negotiations  with  the  Secretary  of 
State  was  the  agreement  known  in  history  as 
the  Webster-Ashburton  treaty,  which  was 
concluded  on  the  9th  of  August,  1842,  and 
proclaimed  in  the  following  November. 
This  result,  however,  was  not  easily  reached, 
for  the  settlement  was  surrounded  by  diffi 
culties,  owing  to  the  fact  that  the  territory  of 
the  two  States  of  Maine  and  Massachusetts 
was  involved,  and  Mr.  Webster,  therefore, 
could  not  deal  with  this  territory  with  a  free 
hand.  It  was  very  fortunate  that  Mr.  Web 
ster  was  a  New  England  man,  and  his  per 
sonal  influence  as  well  as  the  tact  he  displayed 
were  most  effective  in  managing  the  arrange- 


78         ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  OF  PEACE 

ments  with  the  two  States.  It  is  not  possi 
ble  to  follow  the  negotiations  in  their  details, 
for  the  discussion  involved  filled  volumes  at 
the  time  and  might  be  made  to  fill  volumes 
now.  All  that  it  is  possible  to  say  here  is 
that  the  treaty  brought  about,  in  the  first 
place,  a  condition  of  entire  peace  between 
the  two  countries  and  thus  put  an  end  to 
one  in  which  war  was  momentarily  prob 
able.  It  settled  the  northeastern  boun 
dary  and  the  northern  boundary  from  Lake 
Huron  to  the  Lake  of  the  Woods,  together 
with  various  matters  related  to  these  two 
questions.  It  also  made  an  agreement  for 
joint  effort  toward  the  suppression  of  the 
slave  trade  and  for  joint  remonstrances  to 
the  other  Powers  against  that  traffic.  It 
further  provided  in  another  article  for  the 
extradition  of  criminals.  As  a  whole  the 
treaty  was  a  most  important  advance  toward 
the  establishment  of  good  relations  between 
the  two  branches  of  the  English-speaking 
people.  It  was  one  of  Mr.  Webster's  great 
est  achievements,  and,  in  view  of  the  extreme 


LORD    ASHBURTON 

(From  portrait  in  State  Department) 


ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  OF  PEACE        79 

irritation  existing  and  the  incipient  border 
warfare,  it  was  a  very  remarkable  feat. 
Benton  denounced  the  treaty  in  the  Senate 
as  a  surrender  to  England,  and  Lord  Palm- 
erston  assailed  it  in  Parliament  as  a  surrender 
by  England  to  the  United  States ;  from 
which  it  may  be  inferred  that  it  was,  upon 
the  whole,  a  very  fair  settlement. 

The  Webster-Ashburton  Treaty  had,  how 
ever,  one  defect;  it  did  not  determine  our 
northwestern  boundary  beyond  the  Rocky 
Mountains.  That  region,  it  will  be  remem 
bered,  under  the  treaties  of  1818  and  1827 
was  left  to  the  joint  occupation  of  Great 
Britain  and  the  United  States,  although 
Mr.  Monroe  had  offered  to  end  the  dispute 
by  adopting  the  forty-ninth  parallel  as  the 
line  of  division.  The  country  for  some  time 
remained  unsettled,  but  the  Hudson  Bay 
Company  finally  started  to  push  its  posts 
down  to  the  Columbia  Eiver,  and  just  when 
Mr.  Webster  was  at  work  on  the  treaty  with 
Lord  Ashburton  the  American  movement 
toward  Oregon  began  in  earnest.  As  soon 


80         ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  OF  PEACE 

as  our  settlers  arrived  there  troubles  at  once 
arose,  and  the  question  drifted  into  the  do 
main  of  polities.  The  failure  of  the  Web 
ster- A  shburton  Treaty  to  deal  with  it  and 
the  absorption  of  the  Administration  in  the 
much  greater  question  of  the  annexation  of 
Texas  kept  the  whole  matter  open  with  in 
creasing  irritation,  although  Mr.  Tyler  re 
newed  the  offer  of  the  forty-ninth  parallel, 
to  which  Great  Britain  paid  no  attention. 
The  American  rights  and  claims  were  taken 
up  with  noisy  enthusiasm  in  different  parts 
of  the  country,  and  were  put  forward  by 
public  meetings  in  the  largest  possible  way. 
When  the  election  of  1844  came  on,  the 
Democrats  took  extreme  ground  in  their 
platform,  claiming  the  whole  region  which 
was  in  dispute,  and  the  cry  of  "  Fifty-four 
forty  or  fight"  ran  through  the  campaign. 
The  excitement  was  enhanced  by  the  failure 
of  Congress  to  act,  for  there  were  many 
Senators  and  Representatives  from  the  older 
parts  of  the  country  who  regarded  Oregon 
as  worthless,  and  who  resisted  all  efforts  to 


ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  OF  PEACE         81 

take  action  in  regard  to  it.  Mr.  Polk,  the 
Democratic  candidate,  was  one  of  the  ex 
tremists  on  the  question  and  in  favor  of  the 
54-40  line.  Nothing  could  have  been  less 
desirable  than  this  attitude.  Itjs  never  well 
to  threaten,  and  it  is  particularly  undesirable 
to  threaten  unless  you  mean  just  what  you 
say.  The  people  who  were  responsible  for 
the  cry  of  "  Fifty-four  forty  or  fight "  did 
not  really  intend  to  fight  for  that  line,  and 
therefore  the  cry  was  mere  bluster  for  politi 
cal  purposes.  It  had,  however,  the  effect  of 
inflaming  the  question,  so  that  there  was 
talk  of  war  on  both  sides  of  the  Atlantic. 
When  Mr.  Polk  came  in,  he  took  very  ex 
treme  ground  in  his  inaugural,  which  had,  as 
was  to  be  expected,  a  very  bad  effect  in  Eng 
land,  and  increased  the  difficulty  of  a  settle 
ment.  After  all  his  bluster,  however,  Polk, 
with  the  very  lame  excuse  that  he  was  in 
volved  by  the  acts  of  his  predecessor,  renewed 
the  offer  of  the  forty-ninth  parallel,  which 
Mr.  Pakenham,  the  British  Minister,  who 
was  apparently  about  as  judicious  as  Polk, 


82         ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  OF  PEACE 

promptly,  and,  as  it  afterward  appeared, 
without  authority,  declined.  President  Polk 
in  his  Message  asked  Congress  for  authority 
to  terminate  the  convention  of  1827.  Res 
olutions  were  passed  and  the  convention 
was  terminated.  The  situation  had  now  be 
come  so  threatening  that  Mr.  Webster  made 
a  strong  speech  at  Boston  in  which  he  de 
nounced  the  folly  of  going  to  war  with 
England  on  such  a  question  and  urged  its 
proper  settlement.  The  speech  made  a  deep 
impression  not  only  in  England  and  Amer 
ica,  but  in  Europe.  Pakenham,  under  in 
structions  from  the  Ministry,  then  renewed 
on  his  side  the  offer  of  the  forty-ninth 
parallel,  and  the  valiant  Polk  accepted  it 
with  the  approval  of  Congress.  The  treaty 
of  1846  followed,  by  which  the  line  to  the 
coast  was  settled.  We  obtained  the  Oregon 
country  and  granted  to  Great  Britain  the 
right  of  navigation  on  the  Columbia  Eiver. 
The  loss  of  the  region  between  the  forty- 
ninth  parallel  and  the  line  of  54-40  was  one 
of  the  most  severe  which  ever  befell  the 


ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  OF  PEACE         83 

United  States.  Whether  jt^ould  havejbeen 
obtained  without  a  war  is  probably  doubtful, 
but  it  never  ought  to  have  been  said,  offi 
cially  or  otherwise,  that  we  would  fight  for 
54-40  unless  we  were  fully  prepared  to  do  so. 
If  we  had  stood  firm  for  the  line  of  54-40 
without  threats,  it  is  quite  possible  that  we 
might  have  succeeded  in  the  end ;  but  the 
hypotheses  of  history  are  of  little  practical 
value,  and  the  fact  remains  that  by  the 
treaty  of  1846  we  lost  a  complete  control 
of  the  Pacific  coast. 

It  is  impossible,  nor  is  it  necessary  here, 
to  enter  into  the  controversies  which  arose 

from  the  annexation  of  Texas  and  in  which 

j 

England  took  no  little  interest,  (but  the 
great  movement  of  expansion  which  charac 
terized  that  period  brought  on  another 
difference  with  England  which  at  one  time 
was  very  serious  and  which  resulted  in  a 
treaty  that  was  for  many  years  a  stumbling- 
block  in  the  way  of  all  plans  for  building 
an  Isthmian  canal.  From  the  time  of  Mon 
roe,  Clay,  and  John  Quincy  Adams  the 


84        ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  OF  PEACE 

construction  of  an  interoceanic  canal  had 
been  one  of  the  cherished  desires  of  the 
United  States.  It  passed  through  many 
phases,  involved  as  it  was  in  the  tortuous 
and  revolutionary  conditions  of  Central 
America,  but  the  question  finally  came  to 
a  head  after  the  annexation  of  Texas. 
Great  Britain  had  always,  despite  treaties 
to  the  contrary,  maintained  a  hold  on  the 
Mosquito  Coast  and  was  in  the  habit  of 
exercising  a  protectorate  over  a  person, 
whom  she  humorously  called  the  "  Mos 
quito  King,"  selected  from  the  worthless 
savages  who  inhabited  that  region.  She 
now  took  advantage  of  this  interest  in  the 
Mosquito  Coast  to  take  possession  of  San 
Juan,  which  was  at  the  mouth  of  the  river 
where  it  was  planned  to  begin  the  Nica 
ragua  Canal.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
United  States  engaged  in  the  work  of 
making  arrangements  with  the  Central 
American  republics  and  with  Granada  to 
get  possession  of  the  canal  routes.  It  is 
not  necessary  to  follow  the  treaties  made 


ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  OF  PEACE         85 

by  Mr.  Hise  and  later  by  Mr.  Squier  in 
which  they  exceeded  their  instructions  and 
secured  for  us  everything  we  desired. 
With  England  at  the  mouth  of  the  San 
Juan  and  indulging  herself  in  the  seizure 
of  Tigre  Island,  and  with  the  United  States 
possessed  of  treaties  entered  into  by  the 
people  of  the  countries  through  which  the 
canal  must  pass,  all  the  conditions  were 
ripe  for  a  very  pretty  quarrel,  which  there 
upon  duly  arose.  There  is  no  necessity 
of  following  it  in  all  its  intricacies,  but 
the  result  was  a  treaty  hastily  made  by 
Sir  Henry  Bulwer,  the  British  Minister, 
and  Mr.  Clayton,  Secretary  of  State,  in 
order  to  forestall  action  upon  the  Squier 
treaty  by  the  Senate. 

The  treaty  thus  made  in  1850  provided 
that  neither  the  United  States  nor  Great 
Britain  should  ever  obtain  or  maintain  for 
themselves  any  exclusive  control  over  the 
ship  canal,  or  maintain  any  fortifications, 
or  assume  or  exercise  any  dominion  over 
Nicaragua,  Costa  Eica,  the  Mosquito  Coast, 


86         ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  OF  PEACE 

or  any  part  of  Central  America.  The 
treaty  further  provided  for  the  neutrality 
of  the  canal  in  case  of  war  and  for  the 
protection  of  its  construction,  which  both 
Powers  promised  to  facilitate.  It  also  ar 
ranged  for  guarantees  of  neutrality  and  for 
invitations  to  other  Powers  to  cooperate. 
This  agreement  settled  the  outstanding 
differences  between  England  and  the 
United  States,  but  it  was  pregnant  with 

other    difficulties   hardly  less   serious.      In 
.  i ,  AW**,  -  'j«/"f'!J  ; 

its  nature  it  was  an  abandonment  of  the 
Monroe  Doctrine,  because  it  provided  for 
bringing  in  European  Powers  to  deal 
with  a  purely  American  question,  and  also 
made  it  impossible  for  either  the  United 
States  or  Great  Britain  to  build  a  canal 
without  mutual  cooperation.  In  process 
of  time  it  became  necessary  to  get  rid 
of  this  treaty,  which  was  a  most  unwise 
one.  It  undoubtedly  removed  a  subject 
of  great  irritation  at  the  moment,  but  it 
did  so  by  agreements  which  carried 
with  them  the  seeds  of  future  troubles, 


ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  OF  PEACE         87 

always  a  perilous  price    to    pay   for   tem 
porary  relief. 

Nevertheless  the  immediate  effect  was 
soothing,  and  the  next  transaction  between 
the  two  Governments  was  the  treaty  of 
1854,  which  established  reciprocity  with 
Canada,  and  which,  as  was  said  at  the 
time,  was  floated  through  by  Lord  Elgin 
upon  seas  of  champagne.  Although  this 
treaty  in  its  practical  operation  proved  a 
disappointment  to  the  United  States,  it 
was  at  least  a  distinctly  friendly  arrange 
ment  and  indicates  how  much  relations 
between  the  United  States  and  Great 
Britain,  despite  many  vicissitudes,  had  im 
proved  since  the  war  of  1812.  This  was 
shown  even  more  emphatically  a  few  years 
later  when  the  Prince  of  Wales,  then  a 
boy  of  eighteen,  came  to  the  United  States 
in  the  year  1860.  Although  the  fateful 
election  of  that  year  was  in  progress  and 
the  country  was  torn  by  the  political  con 
flict,  the  Prince  was  received  with  the 
utmost  cordiality  by  every  one  in  author- 


88         ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  OF  PEACE 

ity  from  the  President  down,  and  with  real 
enthusiasm  by  the  people.  That  he  car 
ried  away  pleasant  memories  of  America 
was  made  evident  throughout  his  life,  and 
especially  after  he  came  to  the  throne,  by 
his  kindliness  and  friendship  not  only 
toward  the  United  States,  but  toward  all 
Americans.  What  was  more  important  at 
the  time,  the  warmth  of  his  reception  in 
the  United  States  deeply  gratified  the 
Queen  and  Prince  Albert,  and  was  not 
without  a  marked  influence  a  year  later 
when  the  relations  of  the  two  countries 
and  the  fate  of  the  American  Union  were 
trembling  in  the  balance. 

The  Elgin  treaty,  and,  still  more,  the 
visit  of  the  Prince  of  Wales  just  on  the 
eve  of  the  Civil  War,  came  at  a  time 
when  the  people  of  the  United  States 
were  so  deeply  absorbed  in  the  slavery 
question  at  home  that  they  had  little 
thought  to  give  to  their  relations  with  any 
foreign  country.  The  passions  aroused  by 
the  slavery  struggle  were  rising  to  a  fierce 


ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  OF  PEACE         89 

intensity  and  the  dark  clouds  of  secession 
and  civil  war  were  already  gathering  upon 
the  horizon.  With  the  coming  of  that 
war  all  that  had  been  gained  in  the  past 
years  toward  the  establishment  of  perma 
nent  and  really  friendly  relations  between 
the  two  countries,  which  had  been  severed 
by  the  American  Revolution,  was  lost  in 
a  moment.  During  the  years  which  had 
elapsed  between  1850  and  1860  the  most 
severe  reproach  uttered  by  English  lips 
against  the  United  States  was  the  contin 
ued  maintenance  of  negro  slavery.  The 
reproach  was  bitterly  felt  because  no  an 
swer,  no  explanation,  no  defence,  was  pos 
sible.  Now  the  United  States  was  plunged 
in  civil  war  waged  by  the  North  for  the 
preservation  of  the  Union,  and  all  the 
world  knew  that  the  cause  of  the  North 
carried  with  it  freedom  to  the  slaves.  The 
people  of  the  Northern  States  felt  that 
under  these  circumstances  and  in  that 
hour  of  trial  the  sympathy  of  England 
would  go  out  to  them  at  once  without 


90         ONE  HUNDRED   YEARS  OF  PEACE 

either  question  or  hesitation.  To  their 
utter  surprise,  the  feeling  of  England,  as 
expressed  in  her  magazines  and  news 
papers  and  by  the  governing  classes,  was, 
with  very  rare  exceptions,  uniformly  hos 
tile.  The  vocal  part  of  English  society 
seemed  to  be  wholly  in  sympathy  with  the 
South,  and  the  North  could  not  learn 
until  later  that  the  silent  masses  of  Eng 
land  were  on  the  side  of  the  Union  and 
freedom.  The  bitterness  of  hatred  then 
awakened  by  the  utterances  of  the  Eng 
lish  press  and  English  public  men  can 
hardly  be  realized  to-day.  Early  in  the 
struggle  its  intensity  was  manifested  when 
the  Trent  affair  occurred.  The  act  of 
Wilkes  in  stopping  the  Trent  and  taking 
from  her  the  Southern  commissioners  was, 
from  the  standpoint  of  the  United  States, 
entirely  indefensible,  inasmuch  as  it  was  a 
flat  contradiction  of  the  American  doctrine 
for  which  the  country  had  fought  in  1812. 
Yet  in  1861  the  people  of  the  Northern 
States  hailed  the  action  of  Wilkes  with 


Copyright,  1911,  by  Review  of  Reviews  Company.    Taken  from  •'  Pho 
tograph  ic  History  of  Civil  War." 

REAR    ADMIRAL    CHARLES    WILKES,    U.S.N. 


ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  OF  PEACE         91 

wild  delight,  and  the  hatred  aroused  by 
the  English  attitude  was  so  great  that 
they  were  quite  ready  to  go  to  war,  al 
though  war  at  that  moment  probably 
meant  the  establishment  of  the  Confed 
eracy  and  the  final  severance  of  the 
Union. 

It  is  not  easy  now  to  realize  the  intensity 
of  the  feeling  or  the  fierce  joy  which  broke 
out  everywhere  in  the  North  when  the  stop 
ping  of  the  Trent  with  the  Commissioners 
of  the  Confederacy  was  known.  Mr.  Charles 
Francis  Adams,  in  his  very  thorough  and 
most  interesting  paper  upon  the  "  Trent 
Affair,"  gives  a  vivid  picture  of  the  excite 
ment  and  of  the  manifestations  of  public  ap 
proval  in  Boston,  whither  Mason  and  Slidell 
had  been  brought  for  incarceration  in  Fort 
Warren.  The  Governor  and  the  Chief 
Justice,  Edward  Everett,  with  his  long 
career  of  public  and  diplomatic  service, 
eminent  lawyers,  men  of  the  largest  business 
and  financial  interests  vied  with  each  other  in 
applauding  the  taking  of  the  commissioners 


92        ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  OF  PEACE 

from  the  Trent,  and  in  sustaining  the 
legality  of  the  act.  By  Governor  Andrew 
Mason  and  Slidell  were  compared  unfavor 
ably  with  Benedict  Arnold,  and  Mr.  Eobert 
C.  Winthrop  was  denounced  as  little  better 
than  a  traitor  because  he  sent  some  wine  to 
the  prisoners,  whom  he  had  known  well  in 
Washington,  and  who,  shut  up  in  a  harbor 
fort  in  the  midst  of  a  New  England  winter, 
were  certainly  not  enjoying  an  undue 
amount  of  comfort.  Two  days  after  his 
arrival  a  great  banquet  was  given  to  Captain 
Wilkes,  and  his  officers  and  the  speakers, 
among  whom  were  Governor  Andrew  and 
the  Chief  Justice,  praised  Wilkes  in  un 
measured  terms  and  gloried  in  what  had 
been  done.  Boston  did  not  differ  from  the 
rest  of  the  country,  and  if  such  was  the 
feeling  among  the  best-informed  and  most 
conservative  classes  of  the  community,  it  is 
not  difficult  to  imagine  what  a  wave  of 
passionate  exultation  swept  over  the  masses 
of  the  people  throughout  the  North.  The 
reason  for  all  this  emotion,  and  for  the 


ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  OF  PEACE    93 

violent  manifestations  of  it  in  speech  and  in 
the  press,  lay  in  the  wild  hatred  of  England, 
which  had  been  aroused  by  the  apparent 
attitude  of  her  people,  and  by  the  language 
of  her  newspapers  in  our  hour  of  trial,  and 
was  not  at  all  due  to  the  fact  that  two 
notorious  Southern  leaders  had  been  cap 
tured.  The  fact  that  the  Trent  was  an 
English  ship  was  the  cause  of  the  reckless 
language  and  unbridled  exultation  of  the 
American  people  in  the  loyal  North  who, 
regardless  of  consequences,  rejoiced  in  this 
sharp  retort  to  the  insults  which  England 
was  heaping  upon  the  United  States. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  English  attitude 
in  regard  to  the  Trent  affair  was  not  calcu 
lated  to  improve  this  situation,  although,  in 
all  candor,  it  must  be  said  that  it  is  difficult 
to  see  how  England  could  have,  practically, 
assumed  any  other  position  than  that 
which  she  actually  took,  despite  the  fact 
that  by  so  doing  she  utterly  rejected  the 
doctrine  which  she  had  upheld  and  en 
forced  even  at  the  cost  of  war  during 


94         ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  OF  PEACE 

the  first  fifteen  years  of  the  century. 
The  reversal  of  England's  position  and 
her  rupture  with  the  past  were,  at 
once,  violent  and  complete.  On  Novem 
ber  11,  1861,  Lord  Palmerston  wrote  to 
Mr.  Delane  :  l 

"  It  may  be  useful  to  you  to  know  that 
the  Chancellor  (Lord  Westbury),  Dr.  Lush- 
ington,  the  three  Law  officers,  Sir  G.  Grey, 
the  Duke  of  Somerset,  and  myself,  met  at 
the  Treasury  to-day  to  consider  what  we 
could  properly  do  about  the  American  cruiser 
come,  no  doubt,  to  search  the  West  Indian 
packet  supposed  to  be  bringing  hither  the 
two  Southern  envoys;  and,  much  to  my 
regret,  it  appeared  that,  according  to  the 
principles  of  international  law  laid  down  in 
our  courts  by  Lord  Stowell,  and  practised 
and  enforced  by  us,  a  belligerent  has  a  right 
to  stop  and  search  any  neutral  not  being  a 
ship  of  war,  and  being  found  on  the  high 
seas  and  being  suspected  of  carrying  enemy's 


.   Mass.    Hist.   Society,   November,   1911,   "The   Trent 
Affair,"  by  Mr.  Charles  Francis  Adams,  p.  54. 


ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  OF  PEACE         95 

despatches;  and  that  consequently  this 
American  cruiser  might,  by  our  own  princi 
ples  of  international  law,  stop  the  West 
Indian  packet,  search  her,  and  if  the  South 
ern  men  and  their  despatches  and  credentials 
were  found  on  board,  either  take  them  out, 
or  seize  the  packet  and  carry  her  back  to 
New  York  for  trial." 

The  opinion  of  November  11  so  histori 
cally  correct  did  not  long  endure.  It  was 
not  difficult  for  the  three  Law  officers  of  the 
Crown  when  the  event  actually  occurred  to 
slip  away  by  a  pleasing  gyration  from  their 
opinion  sustaining  Lord  Stowell  and  discover 
that  the  seizure  of  the  Trent  was  indefensible 
because  Wilkes  had  not  taken  the  ship  and 
sent  her  into  a  prize  court.  With  this 
wholly  preposterous  proposition  they  man 
aged  to  bridge  over  the  gulf  which  separated 
the  legal  doctrine  they  had  always  cherished 
from  that  of  the  United  States  and  the  rest 
of  the  civilized  world.  These  ingenious  if 
flexible  Law  officers  of  the  Crown  were  also 
able  in  this  way  to  give  the  ministers  the 


96        ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  OF  PEACE 

legal  shelter  necessary  to  protect  them  when 
they  proceeded  to  act  not  in  obedience  to 
their  doctrine  steadily  upheld  for  sixty  years 
but  in  accord  with  their  own  desires  and 
prejudices  as  well  as  with  the  sentiment  and 
the  passions  of  the  English  people  at  that 
moment.  Feeling  in  England  was  as  violent 
as  in  the  United  States  and  was  quite  as  in- 
temperately  expressed.  A  single  example, 
which  is  a  statement  in  regard  to  Captain 
Wilkes,  will  show  sufficiently  the  mental 
attitude  of  England  and  the  degree  of 
calmness  which  she  exhibited.  Captain 
Wilkes,  it  must  be  remembered,  was  a 
gentleman  as  well  as  an  officer  of  distinction 
and  reputation  widely  known  by  his  ant 
arctic  expedition.  The  worst  that  could 
fairly  be  charged  against  him  was  that  in 
the  Trent  affair  he  had  acted  hastily  and 
without  orders  but  in  strict  accord  with 
the  English  doctrine  as  to  the  rights  of 
neutrals  and  in  direct  contravention  of  the 
American  doctrine  on  the  same  point  in 
behalf  of  which  the  United  States  had  gone 


LORD    PALMERSTON 


ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  OF  PEACE         97 

to  war  half  a  century  before.  This  conduct 
was  injudicious,  no  doubt,  but  it  was  neither 
criminal  nor  disgraceful.  Here  is  what  the 
London  Times  said  about  Captain  Wilkes 
and  the  American  people  in  November, 
1861: 

"  He  is  unfortunately  but  too  faithful  a 
type  of  the  people  in  whose  foul  mission  he 
is  engaged.  He  is  an  ideal  Yankee.  Swag 
ger  and  ferocity,  built  up  on  a  foundation  of 
vulgarity  and  cowardice  —  these  are  his 
characteristics,  and  these  are  the  most  prom 
inent  marks  by  which  his  countrymen,  gen 
erally  speaking,  are  known  all  over  the 
world.  To  bully  the  weak,  to  triumph  over 
the  helpless,  to  trample  on  every  law  of 
country  and  custom,  wilfully  to  violate  all 
the  most  sacred  interests  of  human  nature, 
to  defy  as  long  as  danger  does  not  appear, 
and,  as  soon  as  real  peril  shows  itself,  to 
sneak  aside  and  run  away  —  these  are  the 
virtues  of  the  race  which  presumes  to  an 
nounce  itself  as  the  leader  of  civilization 
and  the  prophet  of  human  progress  in  these 


98        ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  OF  PEACE 

latter  days.  By  Captain  Wilkes  let  the 
Yankee  breed  be  judged." 

One  knows  not  which  to  admire  most,  the 
moderation  of  this  statement  or  the  dignity 
with  which  it  is  expressed.  It  makes  one 
think  of  the  Eatanswill  newspapers  and  of 
Pott  and  Slumkey,  their  immortal  editors. 
Yet  the  Times  was  at  that  time  not  only  the 
greatest  and  most  powerful  newspaper  in 
England  but  the  greatest  and  most  powerful 
newspaper  in  the  world.  If  the  great  mastiff 
of  the  English  press  could  howl  in  this  way, 
it  is  easy  to  imagine  what  the  barkings  and 
yelpings  of  Blanche,  Tray  and  Sweetheart, 
and  the  rest  of  the  little  dogs  must  have 
been  like. 

With  the  popular  mind  both  in  England 
and  the  United  States  in  this  condition  the 
situation  was  not  only  one  of  the  utmost 
difficulty  for  the  administration  but  was  in  a 
high  degree  perilous.  The  danger  was  en 
hanced  by  the  fact  that  the  popular  feeling 
was  rife  among  public  men  in  Washington 
who  were  charged  with  the  responsibility  of 


ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  OF  PEACE        99 

office.  Mr.  Welles,  the  Secretary  of  the 
Navy,  who  if  we  may  trust  his  diary  never 
gave  way  to  a  generous  emotion  or  praised 
any  one  if  he  could  possibly  help  it,  seized 
this  occasion  to  send  a  despatch  to  Captain 
Wilkes  approving  and  applauding  what  he 
had  done  in  a  most  injudicious  and  extreme 
manner.  Congress  voted  Wilkes  a  gold 
medal.  Senator  Sumner  and  Montgomery 
Blair  the  Postmaster-General  indeed  seem 
to  have  been  the  only  men  in  Washington 
with  one  exception  who  from  the  beginning 
took  a  sane  and  thoroughly  wise  view  of 
the  capture  of  the  Confederate  envoys. 
That  exception  happily  was  the  President 
himself,  and  his  attitude  was  more  vital 
just  then  than  that  of  all  other  men  in 
office  put  together.  There  was  no  doubt  of 
his  position  or  of  his  perfect  clearness  of 
vision  from  the  very  beginning.  Mr.  Lossing 
the  historian  saw  the  President  just  after  the 
arrival  of  the  despatch  from  Captain  Wilkes 
announcing  the  capture  of  Mason  and  Slidell, 
and  this  is  his  account  of  the  interview : 


100       ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  OF  PEACE 

"  The  author  was  in  Washington  city 
when  the  news  reached  there  of  the  capture 
of  the  conspirators,  and  he  was  in  the  office 
of  the  Secretary  of  War  when  the  electro- 
graph  containing  it  was  brought  in  and  read. 
He  can  never  forget  the  scene  that  ensued. 
Led  by  the  Secretary,  who  was  followed  by 
Governor  Andrew  of  Massachusetts,  and 
others,  cheer  after  cheer  was  given  by  the 
company  with  a  will.  Later  in  the  day,  the 
writer,  accompanied  by  the  late  Elisha 
Whittlesey,  First  Comptroller  of  the  Treas 
ury,  was  favored  with  a  brief  interview  with 
the  President,  when  the  clear  judgment  of 
that  far-seeing  and  sagacious  statesman 
uttered  through  his  lips  the  words  which 
formed  the  key-note  to  the  judicious  action 
of  the  Secretary  of  State  afterward.  '  I  fear 
the  traitors  will  prove  to  be  white  ele 
phants/  said  Mr.  Lincoln.  '  We  must  stick 
to  American  principles  concerning  the  rights 
of  neutrals.  We  fought  Great  Britain  for 
insisting,  by  theory  and  practice,  on  the 
right  to  do  precisely  what  Captain  Wilkes 


ABRAHAM    LINCOLN 
(From  a  photograph) 


ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  OF  PEACE       101 

has  done.  If  Great  Britain  shall  now  pro 
test  against  the  act,  and  demand  their  re 
lease,  we  must  give  them  up,  apologize  for 
the  act  as  a  violation  of  our  doctrines,  and 
thus  forever  bind  her  over  to  keep  the  peace 
in  relation  to  neutrals,  and  so  acknowledge 
that  she  has  been  wrong  for  sixty  years.'"1 
Thus  at  once,  even  in  the  first  moment  of 
excitement,  Mr.  Lincoln  grasped  the  situation 
and  pointed  out  the  true  policy.  Fifty  years 
later  it  is  easy  to  say  what  a  chance  was  lost 
for  an  exhibition  of  the  highest  statesman 
ship  in  not  at  once  making  public  dec- 

1  "  The  Civil  War  in  America."  Benson  J.  Lossing.  Vol.  II, 
pp.  156-157.  Mr.  Welles,  Secretary  of  the  Navy,  corroborated  the 
statement  in  The  Galaxy  for  May,  1873,  p.  647*  :  "  The  Presi 
dent,  with  whom  I  had  an  interview,  immediately  on  receiving 
information  that  the  emissaries  were  captured  and  on  board  the 
San  Jacinto,  before  consultation  with  any  other  member  of  the 
cabinet  discussed  with  me  some  of  the  difficult  points  presented. 
His  chief  anxiety  —  for  his  attention  had  never  been  turned  to 
admiralty  law  and  naval  captures  —  was  as  to  the  disposition  of 
the  prisoners,  who,  to  use  his  own  expression,  would  be  elephants 
on  our  hands  that  we  could  not  easily  dispose  of.  Public  indigna 
tion  was  so  overwhelmingly  against  the  chief  conspirators  that  he 
feared  it  would  be  difficult  to  prevent  severe  and  exemplary  punish 
ment,  which  he  always  deprecated." 

*  "  Abraham  Lincoln,  a  History."    Nicolay  and  Hay.     Vol.  V, 
p.  26. 


102       ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  OF  PEACE 

laration  of  the  position  which  Mr.  Lincoln 
stated  informally  in  his  conversation  with 
Mr.  Lossing.  Had  he  done  so,  he  would 
probably  have  committed  a  blunder  of  the 
first  magnitude.  It  was  not  difficult  for 
other  and  lesser  men  to  announce  rash  judg 
ments  or  vow  undying  hatred  of  England 
on  the  one  hand  or  on  the  other  to  express 
sound  and  wise  opinions  like  Mr.  Sumner 
and  Mr.  Blair.  But  upon  the  President,  and 
upon  the  President  alone,  rested  the  dread 
responsibility  of  decision  and  action.  He 
understood  and  gauged  the  feelings  of  the 
American  people  far  better  than  any  one 
else.  He  knew  what  a  tempest  of  passion 
ate  excitement  was  sweeping  over  the  coun 
try.  It  was  so  strong  that  Mr.  Russell,  the 
correspondent  of  the  London  Times,  did  not 
think  that  the  government  would  dare  to 
give  up  the  prisoners  and  expected  riot  and 
disturbance  if  it  was  attempted.  To  have 
defied  public  feeling  in  its  first  wild  outburst 
by  announcing  that  Wilkes  had  done  wrong 
and  that  the  prisoners  would  be  immediately 


ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  OF  PEACE       103 

given  up  would  not  have  been  statesman 
ship  but  a  mad  temptation  of  fate.  The 
administration  had  only  been  in  power 
a  little  more  than  six  months.  It  was 
hedged  in  by  perils,  it  was  not  strong,  it 
had  encountered  a  great  disaster  at  the  first 
battle  of  Bull  Run  ;  it  was  in  no  condition 
to  stand  the  shock  of  popular  wrath  which 
would  have  been  poured  out  upon  it  if  it 
had  undertaken  to  give  up  Mason  and  Slidell 
at  once  when  the  excitement  and  exultation 
of  the  public  were  at  their  height.  Mr. 
Lincoln,  therefore,  sought  for  delay  and 
suggested  compromises.  He  secured  the 
delay,  forty  days  passed,  the  sober  second 
thought  asserted  itself,  Mr.  Seward  sent  his 
memorable  despatch,  and  Mason  and  Slidell 
were  surrendered  quietly  and  without  out 
break  of  any  kind.  A  month  earlier  this 
would  have  been  impossible.  On  the  other 
side  of  the  Atlantic  the  situation  was  saved 
by  the  calm  wisdom  of  the  Prince  Consort. 
The  English  Ministers  were  only  too  ready 
to  take  advantage  of  the  Trent  affair  in 


104       ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  OF  PEACE 

order  to  precipitate  a  war  which  would 
have  insured  the  destruction  of  the  United 
States.  Fortunately,  however,  they  were 
persuaded  by  the  wise  counsels  of  Prince 
Albert,  acting  through  the  Queen,  by  whom 
American  kindness  to  the  Prince  of  Wales 
was  still  freshly  remembered,  to  modify  a 
despatch  which,  if  unaltered,  would  almost 
certainly  have  brought  on  war  and  the 
establishment  of  the  Confederacy.  In  his 
"  History  of  Twenty-five  Years  "  Sir  Spencer 
Walpole  says : 

1 "...  Fortunately,  while  the  passions 
of  the  multitude  were  excited,  the  judgment 
of  two  men  of  high  station  remained  cool ; 
for,  on  one  side  of  the  Atlantic,  Mr.  Lincoln 
had,  from  the  first,  the  wisdom  to  see  that 
Captain  Wilkes's  action  could  not  be  justi 
fied;2  and,  on  the  other  side,  the  Prince 
Consort  had  the  discretion  to  recommend 

1 "  History  of  Twenty-five  Years,"  by  Spencer  Walpole.  Vol.  II, 
p.  45. 

2 "Hansard,"  Vol.  CLXV,  p.  522.  Cf.,  on  the  whole  story, 
Lord  Selborne,  "  Family  and  Personal  Memorials,"  Vol.  II, 
pp.  389  seq. 


ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  OF  PEACE       105 

that  the  despatch  which  the  Government  had 
drawn  up  should  be  modified  by  the  expres 
sion  of  a  hope  and  a  belief  that  Captain 
Wilkes's  act  was  neither  directed  nor  approved 
by  the  Government  of  the  United  States." l 
Knowing  from  the  moment  when  the 
news  came  what  ought  to  be  done  and  what 
must  be  done,  Lincoln,  with  his  large  and 
patient  wisdom,  bided  his  time.  The  public 
excitement  subsided,  and  then  the  President 
surrendered  Mason  and  Slidell.  The  coun 
try,  unconvinced,  accepted  his  decision,  but 
the  real  feeling  of  the  people  was  exactly 
expressed  in  Lowell's  lines  : 

"We  give  the  critters  back,  John, 

Cos  Abram  thought  'twas  right ; 
It  warn't  your  bullying  clack,  John, 

Provokin'  us  to  fight. 
Ole  Uncle  S.  sez  he,  '  I  guess 
We've  a  hard  row,'  sez  he, 

4  To  hoe  jest  now  ;  but  thet  somehow 
May  happen  to  J.  B. 

Ez  wal  ez  you  an'  me.' ' 

1 "  Life  of  Prince  Consort,"  Vol.  V,  p.  422.  It  ought  to  be  added 
that  Lord  Lyons,  on  his  own  responsibility,  extended  by  twelve 
hours  the  time  alloted  to  the  Government  of  the  United  States  to 
give  their  reply.  Sir  E.  Malet,  "  Shifting  Scenes,"  p.  29. 


106       ONE  HUNDRED   YEARS  OF  PEACE 

The  avoidance,  by  Lincoln's  action,  of 
this  great  peril  did  not,  however,  alter  — 
on  the  contrary,  it  intensified  —  the  hostile 
feeling  of  the  loyal  people  of  the  North 
toward  England,  nor  was  there  anything  in 
the  utterances  or  conduct  of  those  who  spoke 
for  England  calculated  to  produce  a  change. 
The  vilification  in  the  magazines  and  news 
papers  of  the  United  States  and  her  Presi 
dent  and  of  all  her  leaders  and  soldiers 
continued  without  ceasing  and  without 
modification.  From  British  ports  and  Brit 
ish  shipyards  armed  vessels  slipped  away, 
which,  although  nominally  ships  of  the  Con 
federate  navy,  pursued  in  reality  a  simple 
career  of  privateering  closely  akin  to  piracy. 
The  only  one  of  them  which  actually  came 
into  action  was  destroyed  by  the  Kearsarge, 
and  an  English  yacht  rescued  the  Southern 
officers  and  the  British  crew  of  the  sinking 
Alabama.  This  business  of  furnishing  a 
Confederate  navy  from  the  ports  and  ship 
yards  of  a  neutral  country  was  continued 
with  the  covert  support  of  the  British 


ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  OF  PEACE       107 

Cabinet  until  the  case  of  the  Laird  rams 
was  reached. 

The  struggle  which  Mr.  Adams  carried 
on  for  many  weary  months  not  only  against 
the  British  ministry  but  against  the  Law 
officers  of  the  Crown,  the  bench,  the  bar, 
the  vested  interests,  and  the  aristocracy  of 
England  is  one  of  the  most  dramatic  chap 
ters  in  the  whole  history  of  the  Civil  War. 
The  letters  of  Mr.  Adams  are  a  monument 
of  ability,  tenacity,  courage,  and  force.  The 
culmination  came  in  September,  1863,  when 
the  rams  were  about  to  sail.  On  September 
1st  Lord  Russell  wrote  that  her  majesty's 
government  could  not  interfere  with  the 
sailing  of  the  Earns.  On  September  3d,  noth 
ing  of  any  importance  having  occurred  since 
the  letter  of  September  1st  was  despatched, 
Lord  Russell  ordered  the  Rams  detained  and 
notified  Lord  Palmerston,  who  was  in  Scot 
land,  of  his  action.  On  the  same  day  Mr. 
Adams  wrote  a  note  to  Lord  Russell  con 
taining  a  veiled  ultimatum,  so  thinly  veiled, 
indeed,  that  war  appeared  very  plainly  be- 


108       ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  OF  PEACE 

hind  the  diaphanous  curtains  of  diplomatic 
words.  On  September  4  Lord  Eussell  wrote 
Mr.  Adams  that  the  matter  of  the  rams  was 
under  the  most  "  serious  and  anxious  con 
sideration  of  her  Majesty's  government." 
Still  ignorant  that  his  victory  was  won,  Mr. 
Adams  sat  down  and  wrote  his  famous  note 
of  September  5.  To  tell  the  story  fittingly 
I  will  give  it  in  the  words  of  Mr.  Brooks 
Adams,  taken  from  his  article  upon  the  "  Seiz 
ure  of  the  Laird  Earns,"  which  is  as  admirable 
in  form  as  it  is  thorough  and  complete  in 
treatment. 

"  That  day,  September  3d,  1863,  when  Earl 
Russell's  note  declining  to  stop  the  rams,  and 
Mr.  Adams's  note  conveying  a  veiled  ulti 
matum  touching  their  sailing,  crossed  each 
other,  marked  a  crisis  in  the  social  develop 
ment  of  England  and  America.  To  Mr. 
Adams  the  vacillation  of  the  Cabinet  seemed 
astounding  weakness.  On  September  8th  he 
wrote  to  Seward :  l  The  most  extraordinary 
circumstance  attending  this  history  is  the 
timidity  and  vacillation  in  the  assumption 


LORD    JOHN    RUSSELL 
(From  a  photograph) 


ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  OF  PEACE       109 

of  a  necessary  responsibility  by  the  officers 
of  the  Crown/  To  us,  who  look  back  upon 
the  Civil  War  through  a  vista  of  fifty  years, 
'  the  most  extraordinary  circumstance ' 
seems  to  be  that  terrible  energy  which  en 
abled  the  United  States  in  the  extremity  of 
her  agony  to  coerce  the  nobility  and  gentry, 
the  army,  the  navy,  the  church,  the  bench, 
the  bar,  the  bankers,  the  ship-builders,  the 
press,  in  fine,  all  that  was  wealthy,  haughty, 
influential,  and  supposed  to  be  intelligent  in 
Great  Britain.  And  it  was  as  the  vent  of 
this  energy  that  Mr.  Adams,  after  receiving 
Earl  Russell's  letter  of  September  4th,  wrote 
on  September  5th,  although  despairing  of 
success,  his  memorable  declaration  of  war. 
Enclosing  a  paragraph  cut  from  a  Southern 
newspaper  which  contained  the  familiar 
threat  of  burning  Northern  ports  with 
English-built  ships,  he  observed  as  calmly 
as  though  he  were  summing  up  a  mathe 
matical  demonstration  : 

"  'It  would  be  superfluous  in  me  to  point  out 
to  your  Lordship  that  this  is  war.  ...     In 


110       ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  OF  PEACE 

my  belief  it  is  impossible  that  any  nation,  re 
taining  a  proper  degree  of  self-respect,  could 
tamely  submit  to  a  continuance  of  relations 
so  utterly  deficient  in  reciprocity.  I  have  no 
idea  that  Great  Britain  would  do  so  for  a 
moment.'" 

It  was  a  very  great  victory,  as  important 
to  the  United  States  and  as  decisive  of  the 
result  as  a  hard  fought  battle,  although  it 
was  won  without  bloodshed.  The  escape 
of  the  rams  would  certainly  have  seri 
ously  protracted  the  war  and  caused  enor 
mous  losses  to  the  United  States.  To  have 
stopped  them,  as  Mr.  Adams  did,  was  a 
remarkable  feat  and  a  signal  service,  but 
the  action  of  England,  extorted  at  the  last 
moment,  did  not  soften  American  hostility, 
even  though  English  shipyards  then  ceased 
finally  to  send  forth  privateers. 

In  the  great  life  and  death  struggle  in 
which  the  people  of  the  United  States 
were  engaged  the  loss  of  some  merchant 
ships  on  the  high  seas  was  an  injury  so 
comparatively  trifling  in  its  effect  upon  the 


CHARLES  FRANCIS  ADAMS 


ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  OF  PEACE       111 

result  that  it  was  hardly  perceptible ;  but 
the  course  of  England  which  permitted  the 
destruction  of  merchant  vessels  in  this  way, 
and  which  threatened  by  means  of  the 
Laird  rams  to  break  up  the  blockade,  was, 
in  the  eyes  of  the  American  people,  a  crime 
of  the  first  magnitude.  The  leaders  of  the 
English  Cabinet  were  not  friendly,  although 
Lord  Palmerston,  fortunately  for  us,  was 
more  indifferent  and  less  actively  hostile 
than  was  generally  supposed,  and  neither 
he  nor  Lord  John  Russell,  who  was  much 
less  friendly,  was  disposed  to  precipitate  war. 
The  one  outspoken  champion  of  the  Con 
federacy  was  Gladstone ;  but  fate  so  willed 
it  that  in  striving  to  harm  the  United  States 
he  rendered  it  a  great  and  decisive  service. 
It  was  in  the  autumn  of  1862,  a  very  dark 
hour  in  the  fortunes  of  the  United  States. 
The  Ministry  were  preparing  to  recognize 
the  Confederacy.  The  Queen,  since  the 
death  of  Prince  Albert,  as  Mr.  Charles 
Francis  Adams  has  recently  shown,  had 
ceased  to  interest  herself  in  American  affairs. 


112       ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  OF  PEACE 

A  Cabinet  meeting  was  called  for  October 
23d,  and  then  the  recognition  of  the  Con 
federacy  was  to  be  given.  On  the  7th  of 
October  Mr.  Gladstone,  anticipating  the 
action  of  the  Cabinet,  went  to  Newcastle 
and  delivered  the  famous  speech  in  which 
he  declared  that  "Jefferson  Davis  had 
made  a  nation."  Lord  Palmerston  saw  his 
successor  in  Gladstone,  but  he  had  no  in 
tention  of  letting  him  rule  before  his  time. 
He  resented  the  Newcastle  speech;  he  did 
not  propose  to  have  Mr.  Gladstone  force  his 
hand,  and  a  week  later  he  sent  Sir  George 
Lewis  down  to  Hereford  to  controvert  and 
disavow  the  Newcastle  utterances.  The 
Cabinet  meeting  on  the  23d  was  post 
poned,  but  the  accepted  time  had  passed, 
and  never  returned.  Mr.  Gladstone's  speech, 
however,  did  its  work  in  the  United  States, 
still  further  embittering  the  already  intense 
and  deep-seated  enmity  toward  England 
and  her  Government.  We  had  friends,  it  is 
true  —  some  even  in  the  Cabinet,  like  Sir 
George  Lewis  —  but  the  general  attitude  of 


ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  OF  PEACE       113 

the  English  Ministry  was  such  that,  while 
it  inflamed  the  enmity  of  the  North,  it  was 
far  from  gaining  the  friendship  of  the  South, 
because,  while  the  South  was  amused  with 
sympathetic  expressions  and  encouraged  to 
hope  for  substantial  support,  it  never  re 
ceived  anything  of  real  value,  thus  being 
left  with  an  unpleasant  sense  of  having 
been  betrayed.  A  system  more  nicely 
calculated  to  incur  the  hostility  of  both 
sides  in  the  great  quarrel  could  not  have 
been  imagined,  and  it  does  not  seem  unjust 
to  suggest  that  such  a  system  did  not  imply 
a  very  high  order  of  intelligence.  Only 
very  slowly  and  entirely  outside  the  Govern 
ment  did  it  become  apparent  that  the  Union 
and  freedom  had  any  friends  in  England. 
The  first  public  man  to  declare  for  the 
North  was  Richard  Cobden,  and  he  was 
followed  by  John  Bright,  whose  powerful 
and  most  eloquent  speech  on  the  Roebuck 
resolution  was  one  of  the  greatest  services 
rendered  by  any  man,  not  an  American,  to 
the  cause  of  the  Union.  Lord  Houghton, 


114       ONE  HUNDRED   YEARS  OF  PEACE 

then  Monckton  Milnes,  also  spoke  for  us  in 
the  House  of  Commons.  Mr.  Forster  was 
our  friend,  so  were  John  Stuart  Mill,  Gold- 
win  Smith,  and  Thomas  Hughes  ;  and  there 
were  others,  of  course,  like  these  men,  whose 
support  it  was  an  honor  to  have. 

The  working-men  of  Lancashire,  reduced 
to  misery  by  the  cotton  famine,  were  none 
the  less  true  in  their  sympathy  for  the 
cause  which  they  believed  to  be  that  of 
human  rights  and  human  freedom.  But 
these  voices,  potent  as  they  were,  were 
lost  in  the  general  clamor  which  arose 
from  the  clubs  of  London,  from  the  news 
papers,  and  from  the  reviews.  The  desire 
to  side  actively  with  the  South  declined,  of 
course,  as  the  fortunes  of  the  Confederacy 
sank,  but  the  contemptuous  abuse  of  the 
North  went  on  without  abatement.  Even 
so  late  as  the  last  year  of  the  war  as 
clever  a  man  as  Charles  Lever  demon 
strated,  in  Blackwood's  Magazine,  to  his  own 
satisfaction  the  folly  and  absurdity  of 
Sherman's  great  movement.  The  article 


ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  OF  PEACE       115 

appeared  just   in   time    to   greet    Sherman 
as  he  emerged  triumphant  at  Savannah. 

Sherman's  march  to  the  sea,  following 
jeers  and  predictions  like  those  put  forth 
by  Lever,  produced  a  profound  impression 
in  England,  which  then,  at  last,  seemed  to 
become  dimly  conscious  that  a  great  war 
had  been  fought  out  by  great  armies.  The 
end  of  the  war  and  the  complete  triumph 
of  the  Union  cause  soon  followed.  As  in 
games,  so  in  more  serious  things,  English 
men  are  excellent  winners,  but,  as  a  rule, 
poor  losers,  apt  to  cry  out,  when  they  have 
lost,  that  there  has  been  something  unfair, 
and  to  try  to  belittle  and  explain  away 
their  adversary's  victory.  In  this  case, 
however,  England  showed  herself  a  good 
loser,  for  the  result  was  too  momentous  to 
be  treated  with  contempt  or  with  charges  of 
unfairness.  Moreover,  England  found  her 
self  confronted  not  only  by  the  success  of 
the  United  States,  and  the  consequent 
consolidation  of  the  Union,  but  by  a  very 
unfortunate  situation  which  she  had  herself 


116       ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  OF  PEACE 

created.  She  had  managed  to  secure  the 
bitter  hostility  of  both  sides.  She  had 
given  sympathy  to  the  South,  but  had 
done  nothing  practical  for  the  cause  of 
the  Confederacy,  and  at  the  same  time  she 
had  outraged  the  feelings  of  the  Northern 
people  and  developed  among  them  a  bit 
terness  and  dislike  which,  when  they  were 
flushed  with  victory,  might  easily  have 
had  most  serious  consequences.  It  is 
quite  true  that  she  had  not  behaved  so 
badly  toward  the  United  States  as  France, 
which  had  stopped  just  short  of  war. 
When  England,  France,  and  Spain  united 
to  exact  reparation  from  Mexico,  England 
and  Spain  withdrew  as  soon  as  they  dis 
covered  that  France  intended  to  establish 
a  government  of  her  own  creation  upon 
Mexican  soil.  Not  only  was  the  French 
Government  sympathetic  with  the  South, 
but  Napoleon  was  more  than  anxious  to 
recognize  the  Confederacy,  and  took  ad 
vantage  of  our  civil  war  to  fit  out  the 
Mexican  expedition  and  establish  Maximil- 


ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  OF  PEACE       117 

ian  as  Emperor.  As  soon  as  the  war  was 
over  we  forced  France  out  of  Mexico,  and 
the  unfortunate  Maximilian,  an  amiable  and 
brave  man,  of  less  than  mediocre  capacity, 
was  executed  by  his  subjects  and  thus 
offered  up  as  a  sacrifice  to  his  incautious 
reliance  upon  the  French  Emperor  and  to 
his  own  ignorance  of  the  peril  of  infringing 
the  Monroe  Doctrine. 

Yet,  despite  all  this,  the  people  of  the 
United  States  cared  very  little  about  what 
France  had  done,  and  felt  bitterly  all  that 
the  English  had  said.  The  attitude  of  the 
French  Government  during  our  Civil  War, 
which  there  is  no  reason  to  suppose  was 
the  attitude  of  the  French  people,  no  doubt 
caused  Americans  generally  to  sympathize 
with  Germany  in  the  war  of  1870,  but  ex 
cept  for  that  sympathy  we  regarded  with 
great  indifference  the  French  treatment  of 
the  United  States  during  the  civil  war. 
Very  different  was  the  case  with  Great 
Britain.  As  soon  as  the  war  was  over  the 
era  of  apology  began  on  the  part  of  Eng- 


118       ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  OF  PEACE 

land,  finding  its  first  expression  in  Tom 
Taylor's  well-known  verses  upon  the  death 
of  Lincoln.  The  acknowledgment  of  mis 
takes,  however,  produced  but  slight  impres 
sion  in  the  United  States,  where  there  was 
a  universal  determination  to  exact  due 
reparation  for  the  conduct  of  England,  and 
especially  for  the  depredations  of  the  Ala 
bama  and  the  other  cruisers  let  loose  from 
British  shipyards  to  prey  upon  our  com 
merce.  Attempts  were  at  once  made  to 
settle  these  differences,  but  the  Johnson- 
Clarendon  treaty  was  rejected  by  the 
Senate,  and  when  Grant  came  to  the  Presi 
dency  there  was  a  strong  feeling,  repre 
sented  by  Mr.  Sumner,  in  favor  of  making 
no  demands  upon  England,  but  of  obtaining 
our  redress  by  taking  possession  of  Canada. 
With  a  veteran  army  of  a  million  men  and 
a  navy  of  over  seven  hundred  vessels, 
including  some  seventy  ironclads,  the  task 
would  not  have  been  a  difficult  one.  Presi 
dent  Grant  and  Mr.  Fish,  however,  decided 
upon  another  course,  and  were  genuinely 


ONE   HUNDRED   YEARS  OF  PEACE       119 

unwilling  to  adopt  a  policy  which,  however 
justifiable,  might  have  carried  the  country 
into  another  war.  The  result  was  that 
England  sent  out  a  special  commission  to 
Washington  to  make  a  treaty.  Mr.  Glad 
stone,  who  was  then  prime  minister,  be 
haved  with  manliness  and  courage.  He 
admitted  frankly  the  great  mistake  he  had 
made  in  his  Newcastle  speech,  and  bent 
all  his  energies  to  reaching  a  settlement 
with  the  United  States  which  would  satisfy 
Americans  and  so  far  as  possible  heal  the 
wounds  inflicted  by  England's  attitude  and 
by  English  utterances  during  the  war.  In 
the  first  article  of  the  treaty  of  1871,  which 
followed,  it  is  said : 

"  Her  Britannic  Majesty  has  authorized 
her  high  commissioners  and  plenipotentia 
ries  to  express  in  a  friendly  spirit  the  regret 
felt  by  her  Majesty's  Government  for  the 
escape  under  any  circumstances  of  the 
Alabama  and  other  vessels  from  British 
ports  and  for  the  depredations  committed 
by  those  vessels." 


120       ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  OF  PEACE 

It  must  have  been  a  serious  trial,  not  only 
for  a  Ministry  but  for  a  proud  and  powerful 
nation,  thus  formally  and  officially  to  apolo 
gize  for  its  past  conduct,  and  yet,  unless 
England  was  ready  for  war  and  for  the  loss 
of  Canada,  no  other  method  seemed  possi 
ble.  It  is  greatly  to  England's  credit  and 
to  the  credit  of  Mr.  Gladstone's  Government 
that  they  were  willing  to  express  their  re 
gret  for  having  done  wrong. 

The  treaty  established  a  court  of  arbitra 
tion  to  consider  and  pass  upon  the  claims. 
It  also  provided  for  referring  the  differences 
in  regard  to  the  line  of  our  boundary 
through  the  Fuca  Straits  to  the  Emperor 
of  Germany,  who  subsequently  made  an 
award  wholly  in  favor  of  the  United  States. 
The  treaty  also  dealt  with  many  other 
questions,  including  fishery  rights,  the  navi 
gation  of  the  St.  Lawrence  and  of  Lake 
Michigan,  the  use  of  canals,  and  the  convey 
ance  of  merchandise  in  bond  through  the 
United  States.  In  due  course  the  Alabama 
claims  were  taken  before  the  Geneva  tribu- 


•-__.   _-.!-_-—       .£,}   0<;>7--  d>i,  J-^C3ft.«SS 


THE    LAND    OF    LIBERTY 


ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  OF  PEACE       121 

nal.  The  arbitration  came  dangerously 
near  shipwreck,  owing  to  the  projection  into 
it  of  the  indirect  claims,  so  called,  which 
were  urged  in  a  powerful  speech  by  Mr. 
Sumner  in  the  Senate,  but  the  tribunal 
wisely  excluded  them,  and  the  case  came  to 
a  decision,  an  award  of  $15,500,000  being 
made  to  the  United  States  for  the  damages 
caused  by  the  Alabama  and  her  sister  ships. 
So  far  as  the  official  relations  of  the  two 
countries  were  concerned,  the  treaty  of 
Washington  restored  them  to  the  situation 
which  had  existed  before  the  Civil  War. 
Once  again  we  were,  officially  speaking,  on 
good  and  friendly  terms  with  Great  Britain, 
but  the  feeling  left  among  the  people  of  the 
United  States  by  England's  attitude  re 
mained  unchanged,  and  the  harsh  and  bit 
ter  things  which  had  been  said  in  Eng 
land  during  our  days  of  trial  and  suffering 
still  rankled  deeply.  This  was  something 
which  only  the  passage  of  time  could  mod 
ify,  and  the  wounds  which  had  been  made 
took  long  to  heal,  although  the  healing 


122       ONE  HUNDRED   YEARS  OF  PEACE 

process  was  facilitated  by  the  fact  that  the 
civil  war  had  made  the  people  of  the 
United  States  profoundly  indifferent  to 
foreign  criticism.  There  was,  moreover,  no 
clash  between  the  countries  until  many 
years  after  the  treaty  of  Washington,  and 
when  the  next  difficulty  arose  it  came  not 
from  any  immediate  difference  between 
England  and  the  United  States,  but  grew 
out  of  an  English  invasion  of  the  Monroe 
Doctrine  in  South  America. 

For  many  years  there  had  been  a  dispute 
between  England  and  Venezuela  as  to  the 
boundary  between  that  country  and  the 
possessions  of  England  in  British  Guiana. 
Venezuela,  weak  and  distracted  by  revolu 
tion,  had  sought  more  than  once  for  arbi 
tration,  which  England  would  not  grant. 
On  the  contrary,  the  British  Government 
had  steadily  pushed  its  line  forward  and 
extended  its  claims  until  it  was  found  that 
it  was  gradually  absorbing  a  large  part  of 
what  had  always  been  considered  Vene 
zuelan  territory.  Venezuela  had  broken  off 


ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  OF  PEACE       123 

diplomatic  relations,  but  nothing  had  suc 
ceeded  in  checking  the  English  advances. 
The  offer  of  the  good  offices  of  the  United 
States  had  been  equally  fruitless,  and 
when  the  matter  finally  reached  a  crisis,  Mr. 
Cleveland,  on  December  17,  1895,  sent  in 
his  well-known  message.  After  reviewing 
the  Venezuelan  question  and  the  efforts  that 
we  had  made  toward  a  peaceful  settlement, 
the  President  recommended  that  an  Amer 
ican  commission  be  appointed  to  examine 
the  question  and  report  upon  the  matter. 
He  said  that  when  such  report  was  made 
"it  would  be  the  duty  of  the  United  States 
to  resist  by  every  means  in  its  power  as  a 
wilful  aggression  upon  its  rights  and  inter 
ests  the  appropriation  by  Great  Britain  of 
any  lands  or  the  exercise  of  governmental 
jurisdiction  over  any  territory  which  after 
investigation  we  have  determined  of  right 
belongs  to  Venezuela."  The  Message  con 
cluded  with  the  following  sentence  :  "I  am, 
nevertheless,  firm  in  my  conviction  that, 
while  it  is  a  grievous  thing  to  contemplate 


124       ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  OF  PEACE 

the  two  great  English-speaking  peoples  of 
the  world  as  being  otherwise  than  friendly 
competitors  in  the  onward  march  of  civili 
zation  and  strenuous  and  worthy  rivals  in 
all  the  arts  of  peace,  there  is  no  calamity 
which  a  great  nation  can  invite  which 
equals  that  which  follows  a  supine  sub 
mission  to  wrong  and  injustice  and  the 
consequent  loss  of  national  self-respect  and 
honor,  beneath  which  are  shielded  and  de 
fended  a  people's  safety  and  greatness." 
The  language  employed  by  the  President 
was  vigorous  and  determined.  At  the  time 
it  was  thought  rough.  England  was  sur 
prised,  and  operators  in  the  stock  market 
were  greatly  annoyed.  The  closing  words 
of  the  message,  which  was  a  very  able  one, 
do  not  seem  quite  so  harsh  to-day  as  they 
did  at  the  time  when  they  were  read  to 
Congress.  President  Cleveland,  moreover, 
however  much  Wall  Street  might  cry  out, 
had  the  country  with  him,  and  no  one  to 
day,  I  think,  can  question  the  absolute 
soundness  of  his  position. 


ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  OF  PEACE       125 

With  the  existing  possessions  of  any 
European  Power  in  the  Western  Hemi 
sphere  we,  of  course,  do  not  meddle,  but  it 
is  the  settled  policy  of  the  United  States 
that  those  possessions  shall  not  be  extended 
or  new  ones  created.  The  forcible  seizure 
of  American  territory  by  a  European  Power 
would  be,  of  course,  an  obvious  violation 
of  the  Monroe  Doctrine,  which  this  country 
believes  essential  to  its  safety;  but  the 
gradual  grasping  of  American  territory  on 
the  basis  of  shadowy,  undetermined,  and 
constantly  widening  claims,  differs  from 
forcible  seizure  only  in  degree.  If,  in  this 
case,  the  land  in  dispute  belonged  to  Great 
Britain,  we  had  nothing  whatever  to  say, 
but  so  long  as  it  was  in  controversy  the 
United  States  had  the  right  to  demand  that 
that  controversy  should  be  settled  by  a 
proper  tribunal  under  whose  decision  the 
world  should  know  just  what  belonged  to 
England  and  what  to  Venezuela.  Presi 
dent  Cleveland's  strong  declaration  sur 
prised  England,  but  it  brought  her  to  terms. 


126       ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  OF  PEACE 

She  woke  up  to  the  fact  that  the  day  had 
long  since  passed  when  the  United  States 
could  be  trifled  with  on  any  American 
question,  and  the  soundness  of  Mr.  Cleve 
land's  judgment  was  shown  by  the  fact  that 
within  a  year  the  question  was  referred  to 
a  tribunal  which  met  in  Paris  and  which 
consisted  of  two  Americans,  two  English 
men,  and  one  Russian  jurist.  The  Ameri 
can  judges  were  Chief  Justice  Fuller  and 
Mr.  Justice  Brewer,  of  the  Supreme  Court. 
They  went  to  Paris  with  the  somewhat 
innocent  idea  that  they  were  to  hear  the 
case  and  decide  it  on  its  merits,  ex 
actly  as  they  decided  a  case  in  their  own 
Supreme  Court.  They  found,  however, 
that  the  two  English  judges  had  no  such 
conception  of  their  functions,  but  were 
there  as  representatives  of  England,  hold 
ing  the  positions  of  advocates  instead  of 
judges.  The  result  was  that  the  decision 
rested  with  the  fifth  man,  Mr.  Martens, 
and  he,  apparently  under  instructions  not 
strictly  judicial,  was  prepared  to  decide 


ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  OF  PEACE       127 

entirely  in  favor  of  England,  although  the 
English  case  for  a  large  part  of  the  claim 
was  of  the  most  shadowy  character.  It 
was  very  important,  however,  to  England 
that  the  award  should  be  signed  by  all 
the  arbitrators,  and  that  which  was  most 
essential  to  Venezuela  was  to  preserve  her 
control  of  the  mouths  of  the  Orinoco.  The 
American  arbitrators  consented  to  sign  the 
award  if  the  mouths  of  the  Orinoco  were 
left  to  Venezuela,  and  this  was  done,  all  the 
rest  of  the  disputed  territory  going  to 
England.  If  the  rest  of  the  territory  be 
longed  to  England,  the  mouths  of  the 
Orinoco  also  should  have  been  hers.  If 
the  mouths  of  the  Orinoco  belonged  to 
Venezuela,  England  was  not  entitled  to  a 
large  part  of  what  she  received.  In  other 
words,  the  judgment  of  the  arbitral  tribunal 
was  a  compromise  and  not  a  decision  on 
the  merits  of  the  case,  in  which  it  followed 
the  course  of  most  arbitrations  and  dis 
closed  the  weakness  of  which  arbitral 
tribunals  have  hitherto  nearly  always  been 


128       ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  OF  PEACE 

guilty.  This  failing  is  that  they  do  not 
decide  a  case  on  its  merits,  but  make  a 
diplomatic  compromise,  giving  something 
to  each  side.  It  is  this  tendency  or  prac 
tice  of  arbitral  tribunals  which  has  caused 
them  to  be  distrusted,  and  especially  in  the 
United  States,  because,  while  the  United 
States  has  no  questions  in  Europe,  Europe 
has  many  questions  of  interest  in  the  West 
ern  Hemisphere,  and  the  result  has  been  on 
more  occasions  than  one  that  the  United 
States  has  been  drawn  into  an  arbitration 
where  it  could  gain  nothing  and  was  certain 
to  lose  if  any  compromise  was  effected.  In 
this  particular  instance,  however,  the  result 
which  Mr.  Cleveland  desired  and  which  he 
sought  to  reach  by  his  Message  was  fully 
attained.  The  boundary  was  determined, 
the  process  of  gradual  encroachment  upon  a 
weak  American  state  under  cover  of  claims 
more  or  less  artificial  and  advanced  by  a 
powerful  European  nation  was  stopped,  and 
an  end  was  put  once  and  for  all  to  the  plan 
of  securing  new  American  possessions  by 


ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  OF  PEACE       129 

the  insidious  method  of  starting  and  de 
veloping  claims  and  then  refusing  to  have 
the  claims  settled  and  boundaries  deter 
mined  by  any  impartial  tribunal.  Mr. 
Cleveland  rendered  a  very  great  public 
service  by  his  action  and  caused  the  Powers 
of  Europe  to  understand  and  appreciate 
the  force  and  meaning  of  the  Monroe 
Doctrine  as  they  had  never  done  before. 

Three  years  after  President  Cleveland's 
Venezuelan  Message  the  United  States  was 
at  war  with  Spain.  Admiral  Dewey's  fleet 
had  captured  Manila  and  the  great  Euro 
pean  Powers  hastened  to  send  war-ships  to 
the  scene  of  action.  Some  of  these  vessels 
were  more  powerful  than  any  which  Ad 
miral  Dewey  had  in  his  fleet,  and  the  Ger 
man  Admiral  behaved  in  a  way  which 
came  very  near  bringing  on  serious  trouble 
between  his  country  and  the  United  States. 
Admiral  Dewey's  firmness  put  an  end  to 
the  disagreeable  attitude  of  the  Germans, 
but  he  at  the  same  time  received  assurances 
of  support  from  Captain  Chichester,  in 


130       ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  OF  PEACE 

command  of  the  English  ships,  which  were 
of  great  value.  This  almost  open  act  of 
friendliness,  which  recalled  the  old  days 
in  China  when  Commodore  Tatnall  went 
to  the  aid  of  the  English,  declaring  that 
"  blood  was  thicker  than  water,"  was  merely 
representative  of  the  attitude  of  the  English 
Government.  The  sympathies  of  Europe 
were  with  Spain,  but  England  stood  by  the 
United  States,  and  this  fact  did  more  to 
wipe  out  the  past  and  make  the  relations 
between  the  two  countries  what  they 
should  have  been  long  before  than  all 
the  years  which  had  elapsed  since  the 
bitter  days  of  the  Civil  War. 

England's  attitude,  moreover,  toward  the 
United  States  during  the  war  with  Spain 
was  only  a  part  of  the  general  policy  of  the 
Government  then  in  control.  When  the 
Panama  Canal,  the  interest  in  which  had 
been  steadily  growing,  reached  a  point 
where  the  United  States  was  determined 
that  the  Canal  should  be  built,  it  was  found 
that  the  Clayton-Bulwer  treaty  was  a 


§  .a 

!  j 

a  5 

!Z  >> 

o  pq 


ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  OF  PEACE       131 

stumbling-block  to  any  movement  on  the 
part  of  the  United  States.  The  American 
feeling  was  so  strong  that  Congress  was 
only  too  ready  to  abrogate  the  treaty  by  its 
own  action,  but,  the  question  being  brought 
to  the  attention  of  Lord  Salisbury,  the 
English  Government  showed  itself  more 
than  willing  to  join  with  the  United  States 
in  superseding  the  Clayton-Bulwer  treaty 
by  a  new  one  under  which  the  United 
States  should  have  a  free  hand  in  dealing 
with  the  Canal.  The  first  Hay-Pauncefote 
treaty  failed,  owing  chiefly  to  its  having 
incorporated  in  it  a  provision  by  which  it 
was  agreed  that  the  Powers  of  Europe 
should  be  entitled  to  join  in  the  neutraliza 
tion  of  the  Canal.  This,  on  our  part,  was 
of  course  inviting  the  destruction  of  the 
Monroe  Doctrine,  and  the  Senate  amended 
the  treaty.  England  refused  to  accept  the 
Senate  amendments,  but  proceeded  to  make 
with  us  a  second  treaty  which  conformed 
to  the  changes  proposed  by  the  Senate,  and 
this  was  ratified  without  opposition. 


132       ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  OF  PEACE 

The  policy  manifested  by  the  attitude  of 
England  in  regard  to  the  Canal  question, 
which  came  soon  after  the  end  of  the 
Spanish  War,  was  closely  followed,  and 
was  indeed  enlarged,  by  Mr.  Balfour  when 
he  succeeded  Lord  Salisbury  as  Prime 
Minister.  President  McKinley,  in  his  de 
sire  to  settle  all  possible  outstanding  ques 
tions  with  Great  Britain  —  questions  which 
related  entirely  to  Canada —  had  brought 
about  a  meeting  of  an  Anglo-American 
commission  in  Washington.  It  became 
evident  that  all  questions  could  be  easily 
arranged,  with  the  exception  of  the  Alaskan 
boundary,  and  upon  that  the  difference  was 
so  sharp  that  the  commission  adjourned 
without  having  reached  any  conclusion  at 
all  in  any  direction.  All  the  other  differ 
ences  remained  in  abeyance,  but  the  Alas 
kan  question  became  constantly  more  per 
ilous.  Nations,  like  men,  will  fight  about 
the  possession  of  land  when  they  will  fight 
about  nothing  else,  and  the  Alaskan  ques 
tion,  which  caused  a  great  deal  of  feeling  in 


ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  OF  PEACE       133 

the  Northwest,  was  rapidly  approaching  the 
dangerous  stage.  A  treaty  to  submit  the 
boundary  of  Alaska  to  an  international  tri 
bunal,  consisting  of  three  Americans  and 
three  representatives  of  Canada  and  Great 
Britain,  was  made  and  ratified  in  1903. 
The  English  representatives  were  two  dis 
tinguished  Canadians  and  Lord  Alverstone, 
the  Lord  Chief  Justice  of  England.  The 
case  was  fully  argued,  and  the  decision  was 
almost  wholly  in  favor  of  the  contention  of 
the  Unitea  States,  which  was  owing  to  the 
action  of  Lord  Alverstone,  who  decided  in 
the  main  against  the  Canadian  claim. 

Thus  the  one  question  which  was  preg 
nant  with  real  danger  was  eliminated,  and 
the  other  questions  with  Canada  were 
rapidly  disposed  of  during  the  succeeding 
years  of  President  Roosevelt's  Administra 
tion  while  Mr.  Root  was  Secretary  of  State. 
One  treaty  settled  the  international  boun 
dary,  another  provided  for  the  protection 
of  the  fisheries  on  the  Lakes,  another  for 
the  international  waterways,  and,  finally, 


134       ONE  HUNDRED   YEARS   OF   PEACE 

the  long-contested  question  of  our  rights 
in  the  Newfoundland  fisheries  went  to  The 
Hague  for  determination  under  a  treaty 
framed  by  Mr.  Root. 

All  these  important  agreements  which 
made  for  the  best  relations  between  Great 
Britain  and  the  United  States  grew  out  of 
the  attitude  of  England  at  the  time  of  the 
Spanish  War,  and  were  due  to  the  policy 
of  which  Mr.  Balfour  in  particular,  and 
Lord  Lansdowne,  the  Secretary  of  State 
for  Foreign  Affairs,  were  the  chief  expo 
nents.  In  a  speech  at  Manchester  Mr. 
Balfour  said : 

"The  time  may  come  —  nay,  the  time 
must  come  —  when  some  statesman  of  au 
thority,  more  fortunate  even  than  President 
Monroe,  will  lay  down  the  doctrine  that 
between  English-speaking  peoples  war  is 
impossible." 

To  that  sound  policy  Mr.  Balfour  and 
Lord  Lansdowne  strictly  adhered,  and  to 
their  action  we  owe  both  the  settlement  of 
all  these  differences  with  our  northern  neigh- 


ONE   HUNDRED   YEARS   OF   PEACE       135 

bor,  which  have  so  perplexed  us  and,  as 
a  necessary  consequence,  the  good  relations 
which  now  exist  between  Great  Britain  and 
the  United  States,  and  which  it  is  to  be 
hoped  will  always  continue.  The  policy 
might  have  been  adopted  in  1798  as  well 
as  in  1898,  but  Mr.  Balfour  and  Lord 
Lansdowne  were  the  first  English  statesmen 
who  not  only  saw,  but  put  into  effect  their 
belief,  that  the  true  policy  for  England  was 
to  be  friends  with  the  United  States,  and 
that  friendship  could  be  brought  about  by 
treating  the  United  States,  not  as  had  been 
the  practice  in  the  past,  but  as  one  great 
nation  should  always  be  treated  by  another. 
They  came  to  us,  it  is  true,  in  the  hour  of 
our  success,  but  none  the  less  they  are 
entitled  to  a  place  in  the  memory  of  Ameri 
cans  with  Burke  and  Fox  and  Chatham, 
with  Cobden  and  with  Bright,  who  did  not 
forget  the  common  language  and  the  com 
mon  aspirations  for  freedom  in  the  days 
when  the  Americans  were  a  little  people 
struggling  to  exist,  or  in  those  darker 


136       ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  OF  PEACE 

days  when  the  government  of  the  United 
States  was  trying  to  preserve  the  unity 
of  the  great  nation  which  Washington  had 
founded  and  which  Lincoln  was  destined 
to  save. 


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"  If  the  writer  of  this  review  was  to  be  compelled  to  re 
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The  Government  of  England 

BY  A.  LAWRENCE  LOWELL 

President  of  Harvard  University;   Formerly  Professor  of  the  Science  of 
Government;  Author  of  "Colonial  Civil  Service,"  etc. 

In  two  volumes 
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that  has  ever  fallen  in  their  way.  .  .  .  There  is  no  risk  in  saying 
that  it  is  the  most  important  and  valuable  study  in  government 
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emphatically  a  readable  work.  It  is  not  impossible  that  it  will 
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Historical  Essays 


BY  JAMES  FORD  RHODES,  LL.D.,  D.Lnr. 

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TABLE    OF    CONTENTS 

I.   Hittory.  —  President's  inaugural  address,  American  Historical  Association,  Boston, 

December  27,  1899. 

II.  Concerning  the  Writing  of  History.  —  Address  delivered  at  the  meeting  of  the 
American  Historical  Association  in  Detroit,  December,  1900. 

III.  The  Profession  Of  Historian.  —  Lecture  read  before  the  History  Club  of  Harvard 

University,  April  27,  1908,  and  at  Yale,  Columbia,  and  Western  Reserve  Uni 
versities. 

IV.  Newspapers  as  Historical  Sources.  —A  paper  read  before  the  American  Historical 

Association  in  Washington  on  December  29,  1908. 
V.  Speech  Prepared  for  the  Commencement  Dinner  at  Harvard  University,  June 

26,  1901. 

VI.   Edward  Gibbon.  —  Lecture  read  at  Harvard  University,  April  6,  1908. 
VII.    Samuel  Rawson  Gardiner.  —  A  paper  read  before  the  Massachusetts  Historical 

Society  at  the  March  meeting  of  1902. 
VIII.  William  E.  H.  Lecky.  —  A  paper  read  before  the  Massachusetts  Historical  Society 

at  the  November  meeting  of  1903. 
IX.   Sir  Spencer  Walpole.  — A  paper  read  before  the  Massachusetts  Historical  Society 

at  the  November  meeting  of  1907. 

X.   John  Richard  Green.  —  Address  at  the  gathering  of  Historians  on  June  5,  1909,  to 
mark  the  placing  of  a  tablet  in  the  Inner  Quadrangle  of  Jesus  College,  Oxford, 
to  the  memory  of  John  Richard  Green. 
XI.  Edward  L.  Pierce.  —A  paper  read  before  the  Massachusetts  Historical  Society  at 

the  October  meeting  of  1897. 

XII.  Jacob  D.  Cox.  — A  paper  read  before  the  Massachusetts  Historical  Society  at  the 
October  meeting  of  1900. 

XIII.  Edward  Gaylord  Bourne.  —  A  paper  read  before  the  Massachusetts  Historical 

Society  at  the  March  meeting  of  1908. 

XIV.  The  Presidential  Office.  —  An  Essay  printed  in  Scribner's  Magazine  of  February, 

1903. 

XV.  A  Review  of  President  Hayes's  Administration.  — Address  delivered  at  the  An 
nual  Meeting  of  the  Graduate  School  of  Arts  and  Sciences,  Harvard  University. 
XVI.  Edwin  Lawrence  Godkin.  —  Lecture  read  at  Harvard  University  April  13,  1908. 
XVII.  Who  Burned  Columbia?  — A  paper  read  before  the  Massachusetts  Historical  Soci 
ety  at  the  November  meeting  of  1901. 

XVIII.   A  New  Estimate  Of  Cromwell.  —  A  paper  read  before  the  Massachusetts  Historical 
Society  at  the  January  meeting  of  1898. 

"The  author's  grasp  of  detail  is  sure,  his  sense  of  proportion  seldom,  if 
ever,  at  fault,  his  judgment  of  a  reader's  interest  in  a  subject  admirable,  and 
his  impartiality  can  never  be  doubted.  No  one  need  hesitate  to  hail  Mr. 
Rhodes  as  one  of  the  great  American  historians."  —  New  York  Sun. 


THE    MACMILLAN    COMPANY 

Publishers  64-66  Fifth  Avenue  New  York 


AN  IMPORTANT  BOOK 

Lectures  on  the  American  Civil  War 

Delivered  before  the  University  of  Oxford 
BY  JAMES  FORD  RHODES,  LL.D,  D.Lrrr. 

Author  of  "  The  History  of  the  United  States  From  the  Compromise  of  1850  to 

the  Final  Restoration  of  Home  Rule  at  the  South  in  1877," 

"  Historical  Essays,"  etc. 

Cloth,  colored  map,  $f.jo  net;  postpaid,  $1.62 

These  lectures,  delivered  before  the  University  of  Oxford  in 
May,  1912,  inaugurated  a  course  on  the  History  and  Institu 
tions  of  the  United  States.  While  written  for  an  English  audi 
ence,  they  are  an  attempt  to  relate  concisely  the  antecedents 
and  the  salient  events  of  our  Civil  War.  Mr.  Rhodes's  deep 
conviction  that  the  war  was  due  to  slavery  is  cogently  set  forth; 
his  story  of  the  decade  before  1861  shows  the  resistless  march 
of  events  toward  the  bloody  consummation.  The  events  of  the 
war  itself  are  grouped  about  Lincoln,  Lee,  and  Grant,  three 
heroes  of  undying  interest;  the  assassination  of  Lincoln  in  his 
hour  of  success  is  the  culmination  of  the  tragedy. 


"The  fairness  and  clearness  with  which  these  lectures  are  written  and 
the  critical  judgment  which  has  reduced  the  number  of  details  and  made  a 
unity  of  the  war,  give  a  merit  to  the  book  that  places  it  in  the  front  ranks 
of  works  on  the  Civil  War."  —  Boston  Evening  Transcript. 

"  The  lecturer's  study  of  a  war  which  marks  an  important  epoch  in  mod 
ern  civilization  is  an  admirable  piece  of  work."  —  London  Athenaum. 

"  The  author  seems  to  us  to  be  eminently  fair  in  dealing  with  historic 
facts.  The  book  is  written  in  fine  spirit  and  will  be  a  welcome  addition  to 
the  literature  of  the  subject."  —  New  York  Baptist  Examiner. 

"From  every  point  of  view  this  is  a  study  of  exceptional  quality."  — 
Washington  (ZXC.)  Star.  

THE   MACMILLAN   COMPANY 

Publishers  64-66  Fifth  Avenue  New  York 


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